Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, I am. Can everyone hear me well?

Veterans Affairs committee  Okay. Bill Webb, thank you so much for what you just said. I was in the same battle for 10 years. We need to talk, buddy, okay? We need to talk about that. My name is Marc Lapointe. I am a Canadian Armed Forces veteran with 25 years of service and experience as both a non-commi

Veterans Affairs committee  Oh, my God. I have a lot to do. Well, okay, I'll wrap up. In my role as the director of certification and standards at Meliora, I have made it my duty to train the best medical service dog teams in Canada. I have set our qualification benchmark to meet and exceed the requirement

Veterans Affairs committee  It's two sentences. I'll just repeat what Mr. Desilets missed to make sure he gets this. I believe Meliora's science-based and compassionate medical service dog team training in a real-world environment is the gold standard for psychiatric medical service dog training in Canada.

Veterans Affairs committee  That is a really difficult answer to give, because you need to know who you're talking to most of the time. There have been big names announced here today who shouldn't be on this committee because of what they did to other veterans. You need to know who you're talking to, so do

Veterans Affairs committee  What do you mean by a name?

Veterans Affairs committee  It's like Ms. Moss mentioned: There's corruption everywhere, right? It's even in our branch here when we're talking today. I'm not going to recommend an organization per se. What I'm saying is to do your homework—as a person, as a veteran, as an MLA, as a government person. Do yo

Veterans Affairs committee  First off, way before getting there, is this person healthy enough to take care of a live animal? That's right from the start. We need to implement an interview process, a home visit, and make sure that the environment is also safe for that service dog. Is that person ready right

Veterans Affairs committee  My pleasure.

Veterans Affairs committee  Before I answer your question, I also want to tell you that the United States has an insurance company for service dogs called Trupanion. The United States Department of Veterans Affairs, through Trupanion, covers medical insurance for veterans' service dogs. Veterans Affairs Can

Veterans Affairs committee  Absolutely. I'm a veteran, as you know. I've been doing this work for the other veterans for over 10 years. I give 100%. I think that I've given 120% to my country and that, as a result, I deserve a service dog to make my life easier and to brighten up my daily life. A service

Veterans Affairs committee  It's politics. We listen to a person who knows someone else in the government, because we think that the person must be credible. So we listen to this person, who isn't credible at all, and who is even making things worse for veterans instead of better. In reality, 80% of the me

Veterans Affairs committee  Absolutely, Mr. Desilets. The studies conducted by the University of Saskatchewan and the University of Regina provided evidence. If we do things right, within a year and a half, we can reduce the use of medication by 50% to 75% in assistance recipients. The person used to be hol

Veterans Affairs committee  We showed this to the RCMP. We sent the RCMP a file explaining how many billions of dollars we could save in drug costs as a result of service dogs.

Veterans Affairs committee  Dr. Colleen Dell from the University of Saskatchewan has this information on hand.