National Defence committee  Thank you. Family support is not part of my mandate. There's a separate organization that provides the family support that the Constitution and our legal framework permit us to provide. Also, health care, under the BNA Act and the Constitution Act, is a provincial jurisdiction

National Defence committee  After deployment, everyone undergoes medical screening that's fairly thorough at the three- to six-month point, and then they carry on being followed up on with a periodic health assessment every four or two years, depending on their age group. At the time of release, there's a f

National Defence committee  Thank you for the question. I was Commodore Jung's Deputy Surgeon General for three years, so we were quite aligned in where we wanted to go. We achieved tremendous capability as a result of operations in Afghanistan and had tremendous support from the government for the capabil

National Defence committee  Thank you very much for your comments about the medics and their tremendous sacrifice. Reading their citations for some of their valour declarations is breathtaking: their bravery, their courage, and their sacrifice.... Thank you very much for that. It was a very complicated thi

National Defence committee  The majority of Canadian Forces members—I am not talking about our civilians, who are members of the public service—are trained by the Canadian Forces. We have programs that enable us to directly enrol people with certain clinical skills, especially when we are experiencing a sh

National Defence committee  In the case of professions experiencing a shortage, health services is trying to find candidates by accelerating the recruitment process. The process is long, and it is often slowed down by certain complications. For instance, candidates may have a medical condition, or the file

National Defence committee  Yes, that is a concern. I am not familiar with all the details, but I know that those in charge of recruitment look into all kinds of other ways to make up for those drawbacks. They are working on making the recruitment process more streamlined and quick. For instance, they tend

National Defence committee  There has been a very significant reduction in stigma, but it will always be there, particularly in an organization like the armed forces, but in society generally. Stigma exists not just for mental health conditions but for injuries generally, for various types of illnesses. W

National Defence committee  We can send our patients to any civilian health care professional. To do so, we use the Blue Cross, which covers the costs for us. All that can be paid. Any clinician in Canada will be paid to care for our injured or ill members. In the reserve, we also have the framework of the

National Defence committee  There are many qualifiers, based on the quality, the methodology, and the many, many variables, but based on what we know now, we expect roughly probably about 1,300 to 1,500 more just from Afghanistan. These are cases specifically related to Afghanistan, as opposed to the normal

National Defence committee  Roughly, based on that study, we'd probably anticipate it in the three-year to five-year range. But we're still having people present from Bosnia, from the Swissair disaster of 1998, and also from the Korean War—Veterans Affairs has people presenting from that far back.

National Defence committee  Thank you for the question. In addition to certain medical units, we currently allow certain people associated with the establishment of field ambulances to work and live with a remote militia unit. So we are talking about a combat arms unit or any service weapon unit. However,

National Defence committee  Calian does receive a certain percentage of the money that they charge the defence department. A certain proportion of that money they keep for overhead; I can't recall the exact percentage, but I think it's between 10% and 20%—something like that—because of all the recruiting th

National Defence committee  That's correct. Over and above whatever they pay the clinician, they would also be receiving from the defence department, as part of the contract, an amount to cover their overhead cost, the cost for them to do their recruiting and personnel management function.

National Defence committee  I don't think we have specific data for OSI cases from the Medak Pocket, or even data on whether... May I ask Dr. Heber to respond to that question on the clinical aspect?