Veterans Affairs committee  I was about to respond by saying, “Read my book”, but I'm not going to say that.

Veterans Affairs committee  The difficulty is that when we come back, we're trying to go to sleep in a bed and in an atmosphere that is foreign to us. It's foreign to us because, and I came back and the slaughter of a million people or so didn't count. I was back as deputy commander in the army, and I was t

Veterans Affairs committee  We can't get to sleep because this stuff keeps haunting us and keeping at us. If there are programs to do that—I know there are all kinds of initiatives—fine, but I would argue that we're into two major cultural frictions that are not easy to come to an arrangement with.

Veterans Affairs committee  In 1998, when I was the assistant deputy minister of personnel, or what they now call CMP or HR, I was able to work out a deal with the ADM, a chap called Dennis Wallace at Veterans Canada, to second a general to Veterans Affairs Canada and create the first joint discussions. Our

Veterans Affairs committee  Mr. Fraser, you've pulled one of the gems out of this. If the family feels they are intimately engaged in the operational effectiveness of the forces, they will feel that sense of responsibility of helping the member understand that's part of the exercise of that member re-becom

Veterans Affairs committee  I was on mefloquine for a year. About five months into it, I wrote the National Defence Headquarters, and I said this thing is affecting my ability to think. This thing is blowing my stomach apart. This thing is affecting my memory, and I want to get rid of it. At the time, the G

Veterans Affairs committee  The VAC has signed an agreement now with the Canadian Forces that we can take care—I say “we”, there you go, proof—

Veterans Affairs committee  —and I say that after 10 years in the Senate—of injured veterans who are no more in the service, and their families. I would consider that family support centre is one of those pivotal bridges they can cross, and survive, into a new world. The family support resource centres h

Veterans Affairs committee  I'm going to let Joe speak more about that, but I wish only to indicate to you that I consider myself in—because I have a psychiatrist and a psychologist. I'm getting care and I have some peer support. I don't hide it. If you were a doctor who took care of me because I had cancer

Veterans Affairs committee  Brevity is not my strength either, so don't worry about it. Let me put it this way first. We have articulated after years of working on it that unless there is an atmosphere within Canada and the Canadian people, and within government circles—and I speak of parliamentary circles

Veterans Affairs committee  With mental health—and particularly the operational stress injury side of it—you are facing an injury that gets worse with time. If you lose an arm, you know that you've lost it, so the aim is to try to build a prosthesis that will be as effective as possible. If you don't interv

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes.

Veterans Affairs committee  We've been working for two years with the Canadian Army, in particular, and with NATO. We've been in Africa getting research because my institute, the Roméo Dallaire Child Soldiers Initiative, based at Dalhousie University, is field focused. We train armies and police forces in c

Veterans Affairs committee  I'll let my colleagues also intervene. The immediate response is that the chain of command must be informed. As regards confidentiality, there's no negating that, but you can't let people be handed over to another body, even to the joint support units they were moved to, or some

Veterans Affairs committee  Joe?