Veterans Affairs committee  Good afternoon. Mr. Chair, honourable members of the Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs, fellow witness, and guests, my name is David Fascinato, and today I will be sharing with you the story of my transition from the Canadian Forces into civilian life. I joined the Canadia

Veterans Affairs committee  Interestingly enough I had the pleasure of working on the business case for why to hire a Canadian veteran, and how to craft that message and understanding to corporate Canada. One of the interesting things I found in my study there was a statistic from a recent Ipsos Reid surv

Veterans Affairs committee  I'll speak to transition in two different planes here. One is that initial transition when I got off the plane a few years ago, versus the career transition, which happened more recently. With regard to the first, I essentially came back from Afghanistan, as I mentioned. Thirty

Veterans Affairs committee  One point I'd like to make is that the success I've witnessed has really been centred on collaboration between various organizations within that veteran transition realm. I'm speaking to Treble Victor, VTAC, and even VETS Canada, where I think ultimately the bigger-picture effort

Veterans Affairs committee  Certainly. It wasn't just because of the winter that it was a shock to come back to normal life. To elaborate a bit, I came back December 5 and on January 5 I was back in class. The last day of my technical contract as a Class C reservist was, I think, January 28, and then I was

Veterans Affairs committee  As is the case with any other serving member, I obviously underwent a number of medical and mental health assessments on my return. Those started, actually, in Kandahar before I got on the plane, and I think within six months of getting back I had completed all my screening. It w

Veterans Affairs committee  I raised the point earlier about communicating those services and supports that are available. It was sometimes a challenge, and I'd have to go hunting for those resources myself. I'd really have to go out and literally spend half my day sometimes trying to nail down various appo

Veterans Affairs committee  I'll speak to a friend's experience. He was displaying symptoms of PTSD and he was having a lot of issues just getting an appointment with a military doctor to talk about it. He had gone through the screens and there were no issues that were flagged, but after a certain point o

Veterans Affairs committee  Absolutely. I agree with that 100%, and even beyond one's technical service in the military as well. I believe there should be as much support as possible to individual members who have, for whatever reason or cause, that they went overseas.... They deserve the support at the oth

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes.

Veterans Affairs committee  In my experience, as I mentioned, my files were lost. They reappeared after a certain period of time, thank heavens. But it would be great to have access to those especially when and if I formally leave the military. It would be great to have access to those so that my family doc

Veterans Affairs committee  One thing that I would jump on is the concept of the battle buddy that I mentioned earlier. If you have someone who has done it before and can, to Derryk's point, be a mentor.... I'm talking about the initial transitions: stepping off the plane, the first six months or a year. I

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes. I was going to add, or Corporal Fascinato.

Veterans Affairs committee  Actually, I'm from Guelph, ironically enough. I'm not really sure how that happened. I didn't plan that. Honestly, I'm going to sound like an echo here, but it is a convoluted process for reservists, speaking to my own experiences. There is an issue that you fall back into a sph

Veterans Affairs committee  Not to my knowledge. I believe, to clarify, they were just misplaced. There was no risk to the information.