Veterans Affairs committee  As I said earlier, an organization will be needed to oversee all the standards. Someone on the ground will be needed to make sure that the organizations are doing the job properly, that the dogs are of good quality and that they all, or almost all, meet the standards. Standards p

Veterans Affairs committee  Basically, veterans have a certain financial burden at some point, and adding the service dog adds to the costs. If by malchance your dog gets injured or needs surgery and things like that, it's overwhelming, not only with our traumatic condition, our PTSD, but it's “Oh fuck, my

Veterans Affairs committee  I think that it would be good to do this with the help of Ms. Moss from the University of Saskatchewan and the University of Regina. Research on service dogs and veterans has already been under way for four years. That said, we must be careful when it comes to people's perceptio

Veterans Affairs committee  It's a matter of taking some and leaving some. Certain people will say that it's necessary and that it has changed their life. It's like with anything else. Some are happy, some aren't. Even so, I think that we need to get input from our veteran members. If they're given the cha

Veterans Affairs committee  You cannot fake stuff like that, but you can train that into a dog, right? How do we know if that's a real service dog? You'll see. A dog never lies. You will see it. It's professionally trained. It's there for the member. It's not obstructive, right? It's doing its job. It has

Veterans Affairs committee  I would like to answer that. When you go to Alberta and B.C., they ask you to prove that the service dog reacts to your disability. For example, I'm having a seizure. I need to pretend to have a seizure for my dog to interrupt me and show that I've trained my dog as a service d

Veterans Affairs committee  Absolutely. The key foundation of our program is peer support; it's not the service dog. The peer support in itself is between veterans. It's a community. We're all helping ourselves. We're coaching ourselves. We're there for each other in bad times. Also, you're absolutely rig

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, but we need someone to make sure they do that.

Veterans Affairs committee  May I add something really important, sir?

Veterans Affairs committee  In the same idea, if you google the Alberta governmental service dog organization, you see there is one person in Alberta who is connected to a friend who assesses all the dogs of Alberta. There's just one person who decides who gets a service dog card or not. That's not okay eit

Veterans Affairs committee  Okay.

Veterans Affairs committee  Are you talking about Wounded Warriors Canada?

Veterans Affairs committee  I personally know the two people running this organization, Scott Maxwell and Phil Ralph. I would tell you to pay close attention. They really like to pretend that they know what they're doing, in order to become more popular with the veterans. However, they don't have any experi

Veterans Affairs committee  No, I don't think that the department is aware of this. That's politics. You make agreements with people whom you know, and you botch things up. That's how it works. There aren't any reference checks. There isn't any follow up with veterans to see whether their dog is ultimately

Veterans Affairs committee  That's a tough question to answer. Obviously I'm going to preach for my choir, because my standards are really high. I go with safety. Safety is across the board, as well as professionalism, etiquette and things like that. We're not just strolling with a service dog. This service