Finance committee  Thank you, Mark. Am I good for a few minutes?

Finance committee  Again, there's a lot of programming for veterans in this budget, and that's always a good thing for veterans. The issue I'm having, though, is with the $20 million towards the centre of excellence. I'm the one who helped advocate for its inclusion in the original veteran's plat

Finance committee  The issue right now is that they're not sending people into these programs until they're a mess. They're at their bottom, at their end, when they come to ask for help. They're saying, get me off the street. That's usually at a point when they're thinking about suicide, and very o

Finance committee  They were all promises for their mandate. They had a very large mandate, specifically concerning in-patient care; that was very specific. I had no interest in opening physical places in epicentres across the country, because very often these fellows who develop PTSD and multiple

Finance committee  I just put a name to it: the “reboot program”, as in rebooting a computer. It's a question of catching them as soon as possible, trying to encourage the use of biometrics so that we can immediately be tracking troops coming off a tour, right away. There's one technique called M

Finance committee  There's another issue with this, though. In 2015, we were in front of a minister of veteran affairs who was pushing an education benefit to us, trying to settle the Equitas court case. Four of the six plaintiffs were eligible and went through the advanced period and the election,

Finance committee  Well, I am an adviser on the Mental Health Advisory Group and did get to have a closer look at what was being proposed. It's a bit of a grey area, and it's not very well-defined. I need to see it going towards physical bodies entering programs. There are existing programs right

Finance committee  I've seen enough study and enough research. I've been to one of these CIMVHR conferences. They love their research money and they want to divide that apple a million and one ways. We're sick and tired of the research. Give us the apple. It's time. As for the statement from the

Finance committee  It wasn't announced. Our veterans community was finding out from their case managers. The day before the budget day and the formal announcement of it, I had to corner the veterans ombudsman. I had to redirect three questions before I finally got it out of him that it's going to b

Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you. I'm also one of the plaintiffs in the Equitas lawsuit and have been at it for six years. I've done something different from other advocates. I've tried to do as much outreach as possible to every single advocate in Canada. Anyone who has ever done a story, I reach o

Veterans Affairs committee  We have research money. As you know, CIMVHR is out there, the Canadian Institute for Military and Veteran Health Research. Thousands of studies and reports have been done on PTSD. They've sliced the apple a million different ways. Enough is enough. We need programming. We need to

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, the dollar figure was costed right in front of me, and it was for building physical places to treat veterans for PTSD, and it was only when the platform announcement was done that suddenly there was this addition of research. So it comes as no surprise now that they have wea

Veterans Affairs committee  Very quickly, this would be an opportunity to catch someone right after they come back from a tour. If someone has seen blood and guts and horrible things, we know there are going to be issues, and it should be looked at immediately. Especially if it's a young person who is 18, 1

Veterans Affairs committee  No.

Veterans Affairs committee  There's absolutely nothing.