Afghanistan committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. General Milner, there might be a mute button on the headset as well, if you received one from the Government of Canada. Even if you unmute in the program, there may be a little remote along the wire that might be the issue. Mr. Chair, and ladies and gentl

Afghanistan committee  I have a few suggestions along that line. These are in order of preference, if you will. I talked earlier about risk aversion. I think that's one of the big challenges that's getting in the way of bringing people to Canada. The way that challenge manifests is in biometric verif

Afghanistan committee  Thank you, sir. I think General Fraser summed it up admirably. The only piece I would add is to really hammer that question of biometrics. What is the solution to biometrics? What is on the table? Again the ideal solution is to bring people to Canada without biometrics and d

Afghanistan committee  Thank you very much for the question. It's absolutely one that's important to be asked. With a great deal of frustration, in some cases desperation, our day-to-day job for the last six months has been helping veterans with mental health issues. Already throughout the process an

Afghanistan committee  I would actually defer to my colleagues, General Fraser and General Milner, as they have had more direct communication with the government on this.

Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Hello, everybody, and thank you for the opportunity to speak today. My name is Oliver Thorne. I am the executive director of the Veterans Transition Network, a registered Canadian charity headquartered in Vancouver but operating across Canada, w

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, absolutely. This was actually a concept that was discussed at one of the centres of excellence role groups. I'd love to take credit for it, but it's not my term or phrase; another colleague came up with it. There is a difference with an injury caused by the institution. Fo

Veterans Affairs committee  No problem.

Veterans Affairs committee  Absolutely. The million-dollar question is how we make these services more accessible. In the first place, we should reduce in any way we can the paperwork barrier between an individual putting their hand up and then sitting down with a counsellor, for instance. Veterans Affair

Veterans Affairs committee  Absolutely. Anecdotally, I can say that we get a lot of our emails at 2 o'clock in the morning from people expressing their interest in the program. That is when individuals often reach out, and we've talked about military culture. We've talked about that element of hyper-mascu

Veterans Affairs committee  Absolutely. For the past 20 year, up until the start of COVID, we delivered something called the veterans transition program. This is a 10-day group-based counselling program. It's delivered in a retreat format and it's built around the concept of soldiers helping soldiers. Som

Veterans Affairs committee  We're a registered service provider. Essentially what that means is for clients who attend our program, who are clients of Veterans Affairs and who have a particular type of claim that is eligible to cover our program, Veterans Affairs pays for the cost of their attendance. They

Veterans Affairs committee  Absolutely, we have approximately 175 to 200 veterans per year who attend our program. Each veteran who attends receives roughly 50 hours worth of counselling. We deliver the program over a five-day period. It is fairly intensive. We are continuing to expand; we want to serve mo

Veterans Affairs committee  We have an unofficial motto. We say that we're transition focused and trauma informed. Everything we do through our program is with the aim of aiding that transition from military to civilian life. For the recommendation, I would absolutely echo what Mr. Ross said. We need earl

Veterans Affairs committee  First and foremost, have the eligibility criteria changed? I believe so, yes. I'm not entirely sure in what way or in what way the processes have changed, but what I can say is that historically 25% to 30% of the clients who have attended our programs have been covered by Veteran