Veterans Affairs committee  Everything that is known or that may potentially assist in prevention is being done—screening, for example. Right from recruitment, we screen out anybody with a mental health condition. Throughout the course of their career, people get periodic health assessments that include men

Veterans Affairs committee  We are currently using clinical psychologists in all our large mental health centres. However, they are civilians and not military personnel. During deployments, we use psychiatrists, mental health nurses and social workers with special skills, as well as our general practitioner

Veterans Affairs committee  Ms. Truscott can answer some of these questions as well, because of her involvement in the technical cooperation program between Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, the U.S., and New Zealand. I'm the chairman of the NATO medical and health research committee. We have multipl

Veterans Affairs committee  I cannot talk about individual cases because privacy laws prevent me from doing so. However, I can say that this is a problem that affects the Canadian population as a whole. Last week, an Ottawa newspaper, the Ottawa Citizen, indicated on the front page that the Ottawa Hospital

Veterans Affairs committee  We have a long list of ongoing studies and planned studies, and it would probably take up more than your time to go over all of them. Some of them are quite significant, including a repeat of the Canadian Forces supplement to the Canadian community health survey, which will be ne

Veterans Affairs committee  The indications we have were that in the lower ranks there were higher levels of stigma, and, as it is in many of these kinds of things in the general population, levels of education are sometimes correlated. But we don't have extensive objective data on that.

Veterans Affairs committee  I can't speculate, but there are significant differences in the way they have historically viewed and treated mental health conditions. Also, there are significant differences in the support provided to their troops and in the duration of their deployments, for example, and the f

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, sir. In addition to the general cultural mindset that's palpable in the armed forces, where it is countercultural to not be supportive as a result of all of the education that has occurred to sensitize leaders, peers, subordinates, and individual members and family members t

Veterans Affairs committee  Specifically related to the Medak Pocket, that was the 2nd Battalion, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry battle group, and the senior medical officer for that battle group was my deputy base surgeon in Calgary. He and I established, after that operation, the first critic

Veterans Affairs committee  I'll talk about the origins. For many years, we had academic researchers or co-investigators from the armed forces who were quite interested in obtaining data to assist in their own or their faculties' interest in doing research on military populations or areas relevant to milita

Veterans Affairs committee  Mr. Chair, committee members, thank you for this opportunity to speak about Canadian Forces health research partnerships. As the senior defence department advisor on all matters related to health and the provider of health services to the Canadian Forces, the Surgeon General req

Veterans Affairs committee  The pilot study is simply for tracking the medical records that are required for those individuals who require ongoing Veterans Affairs support. It's only the tracking digitization and electronic transfer of medical records. It's not an ongoing...we have an electronic health reco

Veterans Affairs committee  Accreditation Canada is the national quality assurance body for health systems and health facilities, primarily hospitals, but various other types of health facilities as well. They're completely independent. They have independent peer assessors from across the country who are ex

Veterans Affairs committee  That's correct. When they do assessments of hospitals or health systems, even ours, even though they tell us verbally that it's one of the best they've ever seen anywhere in the world, their duty is to find things that can be improved. There's no health system anywhere that has a

Veterans Affairs committee  That program is to help us in their medical care and assessment. While they're still in the armed forces, we want to retain them. As Colonel Blais was mentioning, by the time we come up with a need to meet for an integrated transition plan, in some cases the medical system may ha