Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, that was a lot of the experience. They were doing a checklist like they were preparing to pack a Jeep to go back overseas: does it have this, does it have that? That was my experience. They had the checklist, and it was, “Have you been through this? Have you heard this? Have

Veterans Affairs committee  Sure. One of the things that you might not know with that is that there is legislation out there to protect jobs while people deploy. That can be a double-edged sword. When you look down in the States, employers know to look for that, and now on a lot of employment applications i

Veterans Affairs committee  I think you're quite right on that one. It almost seems, when you look at some of the positions within Veterans Affairs, that they were written to rule out non-commissioned members of the forces. I tell you, I'll take what I can get out of a master warrant officer over someone wi

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes. I don't mean that to knock post-secondary education. I've done post-secondary and I know its value. However, what do we have to teach you to make you understand how to deal with these people? There's no program out there for it. In fact, the reason we're all speaking today

Veterans Affairs committee  That's a really interesting question. I actually have a good-news story in that regard. I was just at the senior NCO's mess dinner for my regiment a couple of weeks ago. Before that it was Remembrance Day, before that a golf tournament, and before that another golf tournament. T

Veterans Affairs committee  I also think, Madam, in regard to what you're asking, it just shows us that on the surface the military is too small. When you take away the extra people, those were actually our contingency plans to be able to do stuff like this. When you have just the bare minimum all the time

Veterans Affairs committee  There are some good things out there. I've seen lives changed by the Soldier On program. That thing is fantastic. I don't know much more about its structure or how it's funded, but whoever is pulling that lever, keep pulling it, because it is doing very good things. Aside from

Veterans Affairs committee  I think it's a crutch. I think the army takes a good shot at you, but not a great one. Then, once it's given that shot, off you go. There's a term they have that we call “being on category” and people will cringe when they hear it. Essentially, you get an injury and they give y

Veterans Affairs committee  THCs.

Veterans Affairs committee  Sure. In regard to that point, I think you're highlighting one of the reasons we need veteran-centric care and we actually need a place to provide veteran-centric care, because when we keep sending people out to the civilian market they wind up susceptible to the policies and p

Veterans Affairs committee  There certainly is such a sense. First of all, just on normal releases from the Canadian Forces, if a person is releasing in their late twenties or thirties, I can almost guarantee you that the jobs they're going to are the RCMP, the fisheries officers, CBSA. That's just the nat

Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you, Chair. When most people speak, they say thanks at the beginning as a salutation or a greeting. Mine's a little different. I say thanks because this is an opportunity for us to skip the middleman between the government officials and those of us receiving it at the bott