Veterans Affairs committee  Mr. Chairman, thanks very much to you and your committee for having us here. I have two copies of Combat Stress Injury: Theory, Research, and Management. It's part of a psychosocial stress series, as I mentioned, and was written by two renowned doctors, one of whom is ex-military.

Veterans Affairs committee  I'll let Major Le Beau or Colonel Jamieson take that, but in my opinion, if the circumstances are correct, and if the command's decision is made, then yes. Jim.

Veterans Affairs committee  That's Lieutenant-Colonel Stéphane Grenier; as I say, he's back on the horse. The CF representatives can articulate this a little better than I can, but the idea is to put people back in the field if possible, obviously under some guidelines. I don't know if you read the latest Maclean's magazine on physical injuries, but all of those lads want to go back and join their unit.

Veterans Affairs committee  I'll let Major Le Beau answer that.

Veterans Affairs committee  Other than to say I have heard the figure that the Canadian Forces medical system has only 40% of the people it needs because of a lack of resources in the area, I'll let Jim answer the question. You can throw all sorts of money at them, but if the people aren't there—There is a great shortage of doctors at least in western Canada, and maybe across the country.

Veterans Affairs committee  I will go first. In fact, without pre-empting what they are going to say, the OSISS program has prevented that, and I'll leave the experts here to say that, remembering that there isn't a person in this room who at one time or another hasn't suffered from a PTSD for whatever reason—a stressful traffic accident, am I going to get re-elected, that sort of thing.

Veterans Affairs committee  If I may, Mr. Chairman, I'm infringing on your time, sir, but—

Veterans Affairs committee  Sorry, but just to carry on, there's a step missing here that you're not aware of. The OSISS committee, peer support coordinators, and so forth refer people to the OSI clinic. I'm not going to read it all through, but it has: “What is an OSI clinic?”, “What services are available?”

Veterans Affairs committee  I will ask Major Le Beau to comment on that, and then I have a couple of comments.

Veterans Affairs committee  Does that answer your question, sir?

Veterans Affairs committee  They were excellent questions, and I thank you for that. As Ms. Darte has indicated, there are many countries looking at these people and asking, “How are you doing it?” At the end of this session, I have copies of a book to present to you and your committee, and one for the library here, Mr.

Veterans Affairs committee  I'll let the professionals answer, but I would like to add a comment, as I usually do. I have been a soldier for many years, and this is not a unique situation, where a soldier gets killed as a result of an action of another soldier. The shooter in this case has a.... Let's back up a bit.

Veterans Affairs committee  With all due respect to Jim Jamieson's slight criticism of VAC—and I don't work for VAC either—that can be countered in part by the strengths of the OSISS program, because there are people who won't go near a VAC office, they won't go into the clinic on the base, but they will track down a peer because of word of mouth.

Veterans Affairs committee  What can they do? You have a folder with a whole bunch of handouts. These are all over the place, at all the bases and all the offices. There are TV ads, and so forth. It's a monumental communications problem. The district directors have all of the veterans associations in once a quarter—and if not, the regional directors will have them in once every five months—to spread the gospel.

Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you. That's an excellent question. First of all, thank you for your kind remarks. I appreciate them. I'll get around to your question in a minute, but just to go back to your point on experience in regard to clinical staff, psychologists and so forth, as you may be aware, the first ones went out to the field for two to three weeks initially in Bosnia, which wasn't long enough.