Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Thank you for the opportunity to be here and speak with you today. My name is Oliver Thorne. I currently serve as executive director of the Veterans Transition Network, a registered Canadian charity headquartered here in Vancouver. It operates c

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, that makes a great deal of sense to me. I have to give these comments with a caveat that my interaction with the immigration process has been solely with a focus on the Afghan special immigration measures program. My experience with immigration policy and processes as a whol

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Again, I would focus my response to that specifically around those for the special immigration measures program. I think we've seen recently in the news the announcement that the cap has been reached on the special immigration measures program. We know from veterans and from Af

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I'll speak from our experience. We have seen a great deal of variability in terms of how quickly applicants in the special immigration measures program are processed. That is somewhat of a black box. We are unsure as to what is holding those applications up in many cases. That in

Citizenship and Immigration committee  First and foremost, ensure that anybody who served with the Canadian Forces is offered a place and offered an application to come to Canada. Second, anything the Canadian government can continue to do to facilitate movement to third country locations, like Pakistan and the UAE,

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you very much for the question. Again, I can only answer with my knowledge specifically about the special immigration measures program. Our involvement in this special project to assist Afghan interpreters is the only interaction that our organization has had with IRCC to

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I think we will reach that target, but the question is when. I spoke earlier in my statement about the cost to Canadian veterans and the cost to organizations supporting the Afghans. Every day that these individuals remain in Afghanistan, they are living in uncertainty and in a

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I would be supportive, I think, insofar as it does not further hamper the efforts of IRCC to do their job and process these applications. Certainly, for the folks we are helping that is where the rubber meets the road. Yes, I would be supportive in a review that would provide h

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I would close by saying expedited applications are an upstream intervention to prevent traumatic social and other detrimental costs to our society and to new Canadians coming to Canada. I implore the government to provide IRCC with the resources it needs to expedite these applic

Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you very much. Thank you for the opportunity to be here today. My name is Oliver Thorne. I am the executive director of the Veterans Transition Network, which is a registered charity that provides transition and mental health counselling programs for veterans across Cana

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, absolutely, I would echo Ms. Hughes' thoughts. I really believe that this must be given through informed consent by the veteran as to whether or not they would like to have a call recorded. I can understand the desire to record calls for quality assurance or for addressing

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, absolutely. I would agree. It feels silly to have to say that, but if that's the question, I absolutely agree. I question the ethics of it and even the legality of it. I am not in any way well versed in MAID as a topic, but in preparation for today's testimony, I did some

Veterans Affairs committee  Absolutely not, and I should clarify that my employees never would. They are certainly not qualified to speak about that. They know that. Once again, it runs counter to the entire purpose of our organization, which is to prevent suicide. Without question, if somebody were to en

Veterans Affairs committee  Until this testimony today and the news story that came out in August, medical assistance in dying was not on my radar as a significant issue for the veterans we are serving. I think this has been a serious wake-up call. Suicide has been on our minds for the 10 years that we've

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, absolutely. One of the recognized standards for treating trauma is prolonged exposure therapy. Our program is what you might call talk therapy. We have a group of veterans who are together with specially trained psychologists and returning program graduates—what we call pa