National Defence committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair, members of the committee. Ladies and gentlemen, I want to thank you for your ongoing interest in and support for the health of Canadian Forces members. I also want to thank you for this opportunity to speak to you again on that crucial topic. Given your

National Defence committee  Thank you for that question, sir. There is sometimes a perception, particularly with long periods of peace, that the health system constitutes more of a sustainment arm, because we do have the dual role of maintaining the domestic, static health system, the whole Ministry of Hea

National Defence committee  Any reduction to the health resources would have some impact, but most or virtually all elements of any impact can be mitigated in various ways. We can achieve many efficiencies. We are extremely efficient as a result of a Public Works and Government Services Canada review by an

National Defence committee  It is a concern, and it's a problem that afflicts all health authorities in Canada and in most of the world, but I can tell you that the obstacles to fully staffing our ambitious targets for mental health personnel, for example, are not related to resources. They're related to ge

National Defence committee  Thank you very much for those comments, sir, and for the question. For our folks deployed overseas now, in the event of a serious injury or illness, we always deploy at least a minimum amount of primary care with those individuals. Sometimes it's pre-hospital care. Depending on

National Defence committee  I was the director of health service operations, so the commanders of all the medical units in Afghanistan reported to me in Ottawa at the height of the conflict. We're extremely highly respected by all of our allies for the speed and nimbleness with which we could modify our pro

National Defence committee  Mr. Daigle is correct, and we welcome those kinds of external reviews;everything is relative, however, and we need to continue improving. I mentioned the obstacles to our ability to achieve the number of mental health professionals that we need. We're working hard. We have an agg

National Defence committee  We do collect extensive national data. The ombudsman's focus is on an OSI point prevalence case count database. We will eventually have that with the rollout of an application of the Canadian Forces health information system, where we'll be able to enter any particular diagnosis

National Defence committee  We definitely do not want to further stigmatize mental health beyond what it already is. There is a risk that if we deliberately set up a separate database specific to post-traumatic stress disorder, operational stress injuries, and that kind of thing, it will work somewhat again

National Defence committee  For that reason, we rely on population level, on anonymous large population level studies that give us a much more reliable long-term picture of where the mental health burden is and how great it is. For example, a case count at any given moment from an OSI database would give

National Defence committee  Calian does receive a certain percentage of the money that they charge the defence department. A certain proportion of that money they keep for overhead; I can't recall the exact percentage, but I think it's between 10% and 20%—something like that—because of all the recruiting th

National Defence committee  That's correct. Over and above whatever they pay the clinician, they would also be receiving from the defence department, as part of the contract, an amount to cover their overhead cost, the cost for them to do their recruiting and personnel management function.

National Defence committee  I don't think we have specific data for OSI cases from the Medak Pocket, or even data on whether... May I ask Dr. Heber to respond to that question on the clinical aspect?

National Defence committee  Thank you for the question. In addition to certain medical units, we currently allow certain people associated with the establishment of field ambulances to work and live with a remote militia unit. So we are talking about a combat arms unit or any service weapon unit. However,

National Defence committee  We can send our patients to any civilian health care professional. To do so, we use the Blue Cross, which covers the costs for us. All that can be paid. Any clinician in Canada will be paid to care for our injured or ill members. In the reserve, we also have the framework of the