Veterans Affairs committee  I absolutely do, and I would never actually offer that kind of service, because notice that I said that ours are 10 days or residential; you really can't effect much change at all in such a brief meeting. People need support. One of the healthiest kinds of support we have is grou

Veterans Affairs committee  Well, I'll tell you, I don't think they're really very aware, because so many of them report having not positive experiences with VAC, unfortunately. Even if they are, I think they're a bit suspicious. But OSISS workers--volunteer counsellors who are former serving soldiers--I th

Veterans Affairs committee  Absolutely.

Veterans Affairs committee  Let me just say that we've been quite careful in doing our program, studying it, and evaluating it over the last 10 years, and we're now in a position where we have received money to develop increased capacity by training more people to deliver this program. My answer is, yes, it

Veterans Affairs committee  I've noticed that there have been attempts within VAC, and I think the Canadian Forces and a number of people have attempted to change the culture by bringing up these issues earlier. I find soldiers resist listening to that because, when they come back, one of the characteristic

Veterans Affairs committee  Okay. You've said something that we have observed, which is that if you don't get trauma treated when you're younger, you will have symptoms later in life, and it increases near the end of your life. They are troubled by that. They start getting flashbacks. As you've said, it can

Veterans Affairs committee  So far, we've focused primarily on support coming from the other soldiers who've been to the program. The community groups have shown interest and want to support this, but it's mostly in terms of contributing money. I haven't done an outreach program in the community like that,

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, I think you're right. There are folks in the transition program...it does include symptom reduction, but there's a need for assistance in transition to get them connected with their families and headed toward being re-employed or getting a new job and so on. But we do proc

Veterans Affairs committee  No.

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, we absolutely do. Drug addiction is one of the symptoms of people who are traumatized. It's a cascading or domino effect. They cope by trying to self-medicate; that's one thing. But if depression sets in and they're not treated.... They may not have seen active duty; they co

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes. In my program we've had two RCMP veterans request to come to our program. The rest of them are soldiers, but we've assisted the RCMP with two, most recently within the last two years.

Veterans Affairs committee  No, just the returning veterans and the RCMP.

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, we do. We have what's called a spousal program.We invite the spouses to attend a separate program that occurs at the same time that we offer ours. Ours is a 10-day program spread over three months. On one of those particular days, we bring the spouses in, to wherever we're m

Veterans Affairs committee  I wish I could say yes to that, but the answer is no. I haven't done that with employers. I'll tell you who I have done that with, though. My team is working with the B.C. Institute of Technology here in Vancouver because they have a program for new veterans coming in. We work

Veterans Affairs committee  You're absolutely correct. I think the families are the best early warning systems of when returning members are showing signs of symptoms, so absolutely, we should work with families in a preventive way to inform them of what to notice, what to expect. One thing I do need to sa