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Thank you, Mr. Chairman and honourable members of the committee, for your welcome.
I'd like to introduce Andrea Siew, who is with me today. Andrea is one of our service officers in the dominion command service bureau. She is a 28-year member of the Canadian Forces and a recently retired commodore. She has joined us to help with our advocacy for veterans.
On behalf of our dominion president, Patricia Varga, it's an honour to be here again today to discuss the issue of what we call “combat stress”, or operational stress. For those members of the Canadian Forces who have served on operational combat missions around the world, the experience of those deployments may never end. The experience will also affect their families both during and after their deployment periods.
We've looked at a number of factors that will affect how members of the Canadian Forces will react to combat stress. You have that in the presentation before you.
We look at pre-existing vulnerabilities, which include things like age, family background, and their emotional state.
We also look at the training and the organizational environment, which includes such things as how many reservists are in the deployment. A large percentage of reservists are going out on deployments on the operational side now. You can imagine that any casualties that happen in a given deployment will certainly affect the whole psyche and structure not only of that command element but also of those people on that deployment.
Of course there is the nature of the stressors linked to deployment. They include the duration of the deployment--sometimes when Canadian Forces members deploy, they're deployed longer than what they anticipated at the beginning--the number of additional deployments, how many deployments a person goes through during his very short span, and the complexity and the exposure of those deployments. Some deployments are easy. Some deployments are not so easy.
As well, there's the multiplication effect of pre-existing comorbidity problems, such as chronic pain, depression, and things like alcohol and drugs.
Trauma directly affects how individuals define themselves. Some individuals react to trauma more than others do, for various reasons. Those more at risk are sometimes individuals with multiple and/or fragmented personalities. They may have difficulties adapting. They may have changing perceptions of not only themselves but also the world around them.
Trauma will affect soldiers differently based on gender. Female soldiers exposed to trauma will have less PTSD and fewer alcohol abuse problems, but they will most likely suffer from greater levels of depression and eating disorders. It is also likely that their trauma will be associated with increased exposure to sexual stressors, which will require a completely different type of intervention to deal with.
Traumatic effects can be minimized depending on the duration of the exposure and on the environment, such as the workload, the goals and values of the organization, the support of leaders, and group cohesion. Group cohesion is important. Exposure to stressors in early childhood will also reduce resiliency later in life. The more a person is exposed to them, the less likely it is that he is going to suffer in later years.
During deployment, exposure to warfare can be seen in different ways, based on the perceived threat and concerns about relationships that may already be fragile, especially if the deployment is of a long duration--12 months or more--and if one is subjected to multiple deployments.
Research done in the United Kingdom indicates that one should never deploy for longer than 12 months in a three-year period. I hazard to say that some of the deployments today are for a shorter timeframe than that. If you cross that threshold, the rate of PTSD doubles.
Try to take that relationship back to those who went to World War I and World War II. They were gone for four years. They never came home during the four years.
Research in mental health has established a direct link to trauma exposure, operational stress injuries, and suicidal behaviours. Those impacted see themselves as different, but not necessarily in a negative way. They do, however, see their world in negative terms. They develop a we-them relationship with civilians and sometimes with other organizations within the Canadian Forces itself, and often express hostility and contempt toward those outside agencies.
While they live deliberately to the full, they have to deal with a diminished self and they exhibit emotional fragility. Unfortunately, this emotional fragility draws a toll on spouses and children, who actually live the mission through our modern IT connectivity these days. For example, how many times have you heard that six NATO soldiers were killed in Afghanistan? Imagine the impact that has on the families sitting back in Canada, knowing that their people are deployed and not having any idea of what's happening. The world of media brings it closer into the home today.
Families not only live the mission through IT connectivity, but they're also directly affected by the impact of returning injured family members. The bottom line is that they're all casualties. The Canadian Forces and Veterans Affairs must take responsibility for not only the soldiers but also their families. The current status quo is no longer a choice.
It should also be recognized that there are numerous barriers to improved mental health. Some may have no interest in treatment. Some will abandon treatment after too short an intervention period. Young males may be more inclined to refuse the treatment or the intervention. Young males with major problems are often those who leave the Canadian Forces early. They are often alone--marriages have broken down--and they spiral downwards into alcohol, drugs, and homelessness. They go all the way to the bottom. They have not built up the necessary resiliency to actually deal with their conditions. For those silent sufferers, barriers to mental health must be eliminated. The leadership must continue to provide support at all levels. That's starting to change these days. It's starting to happen.
Practitioners need to establish trust. All barriers to access must be eliminated. Treatment must focus on resiliency rather than pathology. What I mean is treat the individual; don't give him a bunch of drugs. Drugs may be a necessary aspect of it, but don't just give him drugs.
Unfortunately, in the CF there is no model that provides prescriptive guidelines for intervention by either Canadian Forces or Veterans Affairs mental health practitioners. This is the norm in the United Kingdom and the United States. In Canada, Canadian Forces and Veterans Affairs mental health practitioners at both the operational stress injury and the operational trauma stress support clinics rely on informative guidelines provided by the Canadian Psychiatric Association.
Additionally, access to a single point of service for Canadian Forces members and their families remains an unattainable objective. A more cohesive approach must be found to deal with the fact that access to mental health services is dependent on the CF member coming forward, self-identifying, and asking for that treatment.
A critical issue is services for family members who are also victims of interpersonal violence. Assistance to families of reservists who come back and are back in their home environment must be improved to break down the sense of isolation. Imagine: they've been trained and deployed, they have group cohesion, they come back, they go through the decompression period, they go back to their home units, and they're isolated.
Programs that can meet the needs of children must be developed, keeping in mind that the needs of children when they're five years old will be different from their needs when they are teenagers.
Though progress has been made, from our perspective significant challenges remain. The OSI and the OTSSC clinics are not always in the right locations. More importantly, there's a profound lack of academic research in Canada on the life course of mental health issues related to Canadian Forces members. We have to rely on information that comes from the United States and elsewhere.
Even though we see the recently announced Canadian Forces cancer and mortality study as a step in the right direction, there needs to be greater coordination between the Canadian Forces and Veterans Affairs on what is needed in analyzing all life-course issues related to the mental health of Canadian Forces members, veterans, and their families.
I'll step back in time. In its day the Legion played a valuable role, and it still plays a very valuable role today. Back when PTSD was not a common community thing you could identify, members came back from World War I, World War II, and Korea and went to the Legion halls where they self-medicated. They closed circle with their friends and buddies they trusted. That's where they got their treatment for PTSD, or what was called “shell shock” back in those days.
We continue to be engaged in various programs, including transition programs for the homeless, such as the Cockrell House in Victoria--a very effective program--and the B.C.-Yukon transition program for those with mental health issues. This has been in place since 1998, in cooperation with both UBC and the University of Victoria. It's a very effective program for treating individuals with PTSD.
The recent Leave the Streets Behind program, which is in partnership with Veterans Affairs and centred out of Toronto, Ontario, is a model that is working well. We're starting to transport that model to our other provincial commands across the country so they can start looking at homeless programs for veterans in their communities.
There's also the Alberta-Northwest Territories command program with Outward Bound. You may have seen some of that on the CBC report Connect with Mark Kelley. They did a report on the Outward Bound program for people with PTSD. The Legion funds members to go on that program. It doesn't cost them a thing.
In Alberta, and particularly in Edmonton, we are supporting the Alberta military family resource centre child program for children of parents who have experienced trauma. So far we've funded eight serials of that program in Edmonton.
While it is said that we sleep to forget, one must not forget the impact of operational stress on Canadian Forces members, veterans, and families. The Government of Canada must provide support to those who served and to their families, who are now alienated through no fault of their own. The status quo is no longer a choice. If we do not become more proactive rather than reactive, we will regress.
At the bottom of the page you will see the various organizations we have consulted. The Royal Canadian Legion makes presentations such as this, and we shop it around to various organizations. The Army, Navy, and Air Force Veterans in Canada, the Canadian Naval Air Group, the National Aboriginal Veterans Association, the Royal Canadian Naval Association, the Air Force Association of Canada, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Veterans Association, and the Company of Master Mariners all support our presentation here today.
Thank you for the time to make our presentation.
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It's a good day for colours, eh?
Mr. Chairman, with your patience, I would like to take this moment to acknowledge the presence of my own constituency's member of Parliament, . I don't have to go back to our area and say that I saw him working; most of us take Peter for the good job he does.
I'd also like to acknowledge an old family friend through politics, Mr. Kerr, from Yarmouth, and also Dr. Duncan, whom I've met a couple of times. I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Duncan at a Legion about two weeks ago during a town hall discussion.
With that, good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, committee members, and guests. I am particularly honoured to be here today on behalf of my organization, although as yet I don't speak for the commissioner. I want to acknowledge that I'm here with the presence of the Legion. I couldn't think of better company I could associate with during this presentation.
I am a senior staff sergeant with 37 years of service in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. My duties have taken me throughout much of our country, but my primary provincial postings have been in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. My service to Canadians started where most members begin their careers: in front-line, uniformed policing in the communities throughout our nation.
These duties transitioned in later years to include drug enforcement, undercover operations and covert duties, drug awareness roles in two provinces to meet the federal government mandate on the national drug strategy, and criminal intelligence within the world of organized crime, with a dedicated specialty in outlaw biker gangs.
During this service, I have also been a volunteer member for more than 10 years with a tactical weapons team in an emergency response capability. I acted in two primary roles: one as a marksman or a sniper, and the second as an assaulter, the person who is usually one of the first or second guys in the door, depending on what door we're going in. These collective duties have left some life-impacting experiences and injuries with me.
My current duties as a staff relations representative involve the well-being and safety of our members. I have had numerous responsibilities within this program, which is a non-unionized system of labour. I've been continuously elected by the members of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island for more than 16 years. Along with my SRR partner, I represent over 900 members in the province of Nova Scotia.
I also represent thousands of members nationally from coast to coast to coast, and I'm involved in that role through the national occupational health and safety projects. This is a role I've held for many years, and I plan to follow it into retirement as an advocate for those members and their spouses and families who continue to give but do not receive.
In the time that I am privileged to have in your presence today, I've been asked to speak about the issue of suicide among our members and about the impact on mental health and related issues I have encountered with both serving and retired members.
I am not as yet a member of the RCMP Veterans Association and therefore do not speak for them officially. However, I have been advised that our interests and theirs are very similar. I am a member of the RCMP, and in our family there are few secrets, as collectively those still in service and those out of service continue to try to help each other.
Without having prior knowledge of this appearance, earlier this week I sent out over 30 letters to some of you and to many others. In fact, this opportunity, which came out of the blue for me, is going to give us as an organization two chances to refresh your memory on a number of issues.
I come to you today to tell you that I work for an organization that knows very little about occupational stress injuries and has done less than is necessary in that area. Our veterans have been served by Veterans Affairs Canada since 1947-1948, which is about 64 years, but this organization knows little about the serving and retired members of my organization.
The RCMP and VAC should both be ashamed. We are the distant cousins of our sisters and brothers in the Canadian armed forces. That said, our collective belief in each other is very strong. We serve jointly in various capacities, both domestically and internationally. We support their cry for justice, as they do ours.
The lack of VAC understanding was so evident that several years ago we jointly created two positions to enhance education and operational efficiencies within Veterans Affairs Canada. An experienced RCMP inspector was assigned to be embedded with Veterans Affairs, and they, in turn, assigned a senior person with us. Both of those men were excellent selections.
It's sad to say that today that program is essentially dead. Our position of experience and operational exposure for those who work in Veterans Affairs has been replaced by a civilian member. I want you to know that this comment is not to slight our civilian members—they are as dedicated as any other employee—but the fact is that civilian members do not have the operational experiences that are necessary to convince VAC of the real world in which we serve. We failed to maintain that connection, and VAC has not replaced their representative.
Currently there are some veterans' programs that the RCMP cannot access, and I have to ask why. I've asked about this previously in rooms similar to this one. Two of these are the veterans independence program and chronic care and the transition interviews, which is the most recent. Multiple parties, including politicians, veterans' organizations, my friends to my right, and other community groups across Canada, have supported the implementation of these programs, but cannot justify the lack of our success. Around 1988, when Veterans Affairs transitioned from the old Veterans Treatment Regulations, the RCMP got benefits, albeit minimal, within the VIP program. Then VAC rewrote the regulations in 1988. They created the Veterans Health Care Regulations, and despite being one of VAC's clients, even back in 1988 the Mounties were not included in that rewrite or those regulations. How can that happen?
We--I and many others--have been to both Houses. We've been to the Senate and the House of Commons. We have spoken to many members of each over the years and have obtained letters of overwhelming support, but still there has been no action. Previous Ministers of Public Safety and other politicians in and out of power supported the RCMP in getting this coverage. However, there has been nothing to date, and there appears to be nothing on the horizon.
The reason I say that is that I wrote the Commissioner of the RCMP about two to three weeks ago and asked him if he would give me an update from his perspective. He told me he was leaving the country and would call me when he got back. Well, he's back, but I haven't received a phone call, so I assume there's nothing on the horizon. Perhaps you can now see a bit of our poor-cousin frustration.
Our friends in the Canadian Forces are currently at war, and the cost for Canadians is high. We bleed with them, as we have recently suffered our own international casualties, but these were not our first. Our members and their families are primarily deployed at home in Canada in the various communities where we live, serve, and volunteer. Our combat zone is at home, and our tolls of injured, ill, and dying accumulate silently. Two of our most recent casualties were the result of a motor vehicle accident in the west, and a young man went missing in a river in northern Canada. We searched for his body for about three weeks and were fortunate enough to recover him and bring him home.
Programs and services that you need to know about are not limited only to those two that I'm telling you about. In your packages, I've given you some space to jot in some comments about these if you choose to do so. There are about 17. I'll go through them quickly, as I know the time is precious.
First is identity. VAC needs to know more about who we are, what we do, and the nature of our service delivery. It's a sad statement of affairs that they're not even going to replace the embedded member. He was beneficial and worked with our senior management here in Ottawa to help the two-way understanding of each other.
As well, we need acknowledgment about what we are, our service deliveries, and the nature of the duties we cover. The pressures are difficult on an undercover operator or a person working on child sexual assault cases or computer sexual assault crimes. It's not like being in a trade and carrying out some external service to equipment or whatever. I don't mean to correlate that in a cheapening way to the military, because they are as technical as we are.
There are service shortfalls from Veterans Affairs. Every time I go into a VAC office across Canada, I always go to their pamphlet rack. They have one publication there that is uniquely for the RCMP. You have it in front of you. The RCMP worked with them to create that pamphlet in 2004 or 2006. This is an exact duplicate, with the exception of the content, of the Canadian armed forces blue pamphlet. Theirs is blue and their images reflect the Canadian military.
There has been one printing of this since. Now, we have over 40,000 serving and retired members of the Mounted Police. There was one post-printing of this, and they printed, I believe, 10,000 copies. They haven't even printed enough of these pamphlets for them to go individually to each of our members.
I'm going to refer to another one, because it's one that the members receive if they're successful in a pension claim. I only have the English version; I'm sure the French version would come in the French packages. It is to explain the outcome of the person's claim. It's not educational material in the context of picking it up.
I've been in VAC offices from coast to coast. I always leave a note or a complaint that there's no material relevant to the RCMP in their news racks. We got the force to start sending them some Gazette magazines and some other RCMP material, and now there are finally some posters representing the force in their offices.
When I was stationed in P.E.I., I went to some of their hearings. There was no RCMP plaque in the hearing rooms. All the regiments' plaques were around the room, but there was no recognition for the RCMP. Now, I'm not blaming anybody for that; it's just that, are we in, or are we not? I wrote the commanding officer of L Division at the time, and that could now be covered off. I've since been relocated from P.E.I.
The materials need to be expanded. I've been to a multitude of presentations; they do a thousand overheads or whatever, but you never see the colour red. In Moncton, not long ago, I said, “You have nothing in your presentation that is relevant to the RCMP. I don't even see the colour red”. The guy said, “Well, we'll put something red in there”. I've got to tell you, being in the room as the only Mountie with a number of people from Blue Cross and others, I wasn't very impressed.
This unknown person came up to me with a BlackBerry. He leaned over and showed me the Veterans Affairs website on the BlackBerry, and it had a banner that went across the top with the Mounted Police and a horse on it. I said to him, “Thank you very much, sir, but the reason you're able to show me that is that I'm talking about this now”. When you're not even acknowledged in an audience at a conference.... I told the guy I didn't care what they put in there, as long as it was red. That's the battle we're fighting. It hasn't changed a whole lot, but it has changed a bit.
In relation to the VIP, I'm not going to talk much more about that, other than to say that I don't know if it's ever made it to a minister's letter of priority. There must be already 30 volumes of memorandums to cabinet over the years on VIP and chronic care. Somebody beat me with the outcome of those discussions because, really, you have to ask yourself.... If there are 25 or 30 memorandums to cabinet on a program that everybody else in the country has, there's something missing. Maybe this is just being lost in the central parliamentary agencies. I don't know, but we're going to find out.
Transition interviews are a core VAC program. We were never entitled to those until we found out they were a core VAC program. When we did, we launched a pilot project in F Division in Saskatchewan. Saskatchewan was chosen because Veterans Affairs had resource pressures in many of the other provinces because of deployments to Afghanistan, so we chose Regina and Saskatchewan as our pilot. The pilot was carried off really well. It was reported on well, and so on. Then we said, “Where are we going from here?”, so we went to Atlantic Canada, primarily because I was on the board that was making those decisions. We went to Atlantic Canada; the program is now running there, but really with no emphasis. I just received a retirement package and I notice there's a letter in there, but the program is essentially frozen. It is shut down.
There are negotiations going on between Ottawa RCMP and Veterans Affairs in P.E.I. in relation to resources and who's going to pay for this program and so on. While that is being fought out, we've got members all across Canada from coast to coast who are leaving our organization without knowing what their entitlements are and without knowing how to transition into the private sector.
I am excluded, as a Canadian, from the Canada Health Act. I don't feel bad about that. The problem is that the employer, the commissioner, is now responsible for my health care. I'm with a very special crowd in the exclusion from the Canada Health Act: all of Canada's federal inmates and all new immigrants to Canada. That's who is there. When I don't get my benefits from the commissioner, then my health care is shut down.
Those are some of the issues we deal with when we have to negotiate with the commissioner on programs or changes.
When we look at transition interviews, now VAC is coming to the RCMP to be paid. I'm not concerned about who pays. I'm concerned about the service delivery. British Columbia and Alberta are both crying for this program, but we cannot provide it. It is not being rolled out anywhere in Canada, except for in the five provinces I've indicated to you. I could give you a number of recommendations from Veterans Affairs themselves that date back to January 20, 2003, on the requirements and needs of the transition interviews. Here we are, stopped, with only five provinces.
I mentioned the liaison positions. I'm going to give you a recommendation, hopefully before I get cut off here, and I'm not going to say anything more about them than I have already.
Another thing is that members are afraid to self-identify. That might surprise you about people who carry guns. What would we have to be afraid of? There are a number of reasons members withdraw from the force. Since the force has converted its health care program to an occupational health model from a clinically based model that allowed us to go to our doctors and be given health care, the whole timeframe and the rules have changed. Some of the things you will hear from members—and I believe Dr. Duncan may have heard some of this—include statements like the following:
“It would harm my career or future job promotion if I disclose PTSD, depression, or a number of other mental illnesses.” This is in 2010 in the Mounted Police, when most of us have university degrees.
“Members of my unit might think less of me and have less confidence in me.”
“Unit leadership might treat me differently.”
The leaders blame the member for the problem: “Now we're down one body.”
Members are seen to be weak, so there's the “suck it up” concept. I know you've heard that before.
“It would be too embarrassing for my family.” You know, one thing about my organization is that we've never given much thought to our families until the last couple of years.
I would hope this won't be reflected in the minutes. I would ask that you don't. I've been in treatment for post-traumatic stress and depression for over three years. I know what this is about, and I know when I see it, and I've talked to lots of people who suffer from it, but if you ask the RCMP to give you the numbers, they can't do it. They don't have them.
“I do not trust the RCMP. I do not trust RCMP health services. I will get better on my own.” Well, I tried that route, and I crashed on the road. I don't mean that I physically crashed; I just knew that I was in trouble on the road. I was close enough to a family doctor to pay a visit, and it has been better since.
These are only some of the reasons that you have to understand that this is not like walking into an IBM building and saying, “I'm not feeling good today”. Not only that, men and women don't go off sick. The reason they don't is that they're working in two-, three-, and four-person units. If they're gone, the unit's down another body, and there's no replacement. We're the only organization in Canada that doesn't believe its female members should reproduce, because we have no allowance in any formula to replace those people when they're off duty. Who fills the hole? It's made up by the people left behind.
So that's the fear of self-identifying.
Then there's the Privacy Act. I don't have to tell you people anything about VAC and the Privacy Act. I'll spare you that pain, and I don't mean to indicate that there have been pure violations. I won't know until my privacy application comes back.
When you look at the RCMP right now, if I were to make a claim, Veterans Affairs is sharing that success—if you want to call it that—with the health services units of the RCMP all across Canada. If I get an acknowledgement of a disability, they write a letter to the health services people. The health services people go into the record room, pull out my medical file, and confirm what my conditions are compared to the medical profile. Then they either change my medical profile or leave it alone. I'm going to talk about that in a minute.
Where's the privacy here? I realize it's about money—everything is about money—but why isn't that letter sent to the corporate side of the House for the financial accountability when it comes time to deal with the votes? Tell me why two organizations are sharing that information.
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I appreciate that. I think, really, that one can't happen without the assistance of the other. I'll tie that directly to VIP and chronic care. If those two are not chugging in the same direction, we're going to be stalled for many more years. You know my view on that.
In my organization we may portray an image that it's very regimental and so on, but at my level it isn't. There are many at the top who feel that it still is, but we're slowly slagging away at that.
In my organization we are severely understaffed in health care. In the health services delivery areas, we have not had a chief psychologist in the Mounted Police on a permanent basis for probably three or four years. The job is still vacant. In fact, they're using the salary dollars to pay for two projects going on within the unit. Here we are, keeping the chief psychologist position vacant while we're funding two sidebar exercises.
I'm telling you that there are a lot of members out there who need to be identified. I come from an organization of approximately 20,000 to 22,000 police officers, and we have just 14 staff psychologists. The position of the chief staff psychologist, who should be getting everybody on program--on base, on whatever--is not even filled.
The force jumped as a result of the Brown task force and the change management team, as they normally do. They react to some of these things, because there's always short-term interest, so they bring something forth.
One of the products they jumped up with was a mental health program, which is referred to as...it will come to me. Anyway, we have a staff sergeant in B.C. who is a psychologist as well. He's coordinating a program on decompression. The idea of these decompressions is to get out ahead of the disability or the illness or the injury and try to train people in how to handle it. They're doing classes of, let's say, 21 to 24 people. They did three in B.C. They were going to do two in Newfoundland for the Atlantic region in the month of December, and they have one scheduled each month from now to March.
Now, I've already told you that we have 22,000 members. We're going to have a lot of casualties before they roll around and have any noticeable effect with that program.
I want you to know that it's my information that the other 14 staff psychologists are rarely consulted on this. This was something senior management ran with because it came out of the change management group, and they thought it was a good idea. That's how that baby is coming down the pipes.
There are a number of risks with this program. I'm not one to speak about that. I'm not a psychologist.
When I was preparing for this and the force was here and spoke, there were three terms I found interesting. One was the RCMP's traumatic and resilience program for post-traumatic stress. One was the mental health wellness program, because they all transition into each other. Then there was the workplace wellness program. Now we have a new baby on the network, which is called.... Well, it's another wellness program. I'll just leave it at that.
Over the period since somebody's been trying to be accountable for this, they've rolled out a new health care model we're telling the world about. The commissioner has signed a two-page principles of wellness document. I challenge you to tell me what it means. There are some nice phrases there, but what we need is some results. We need some outcomes. We need some people helped. We have to re-establish trust internally in the force.
There are a lot of frustrations that are unfairly put on Veterans Affairs. Some of those are because the force has not maintained our medical files in a very good way. People like me thought our employer was keeping our medical records, not unlike in the military. When the time came that I needed them, there was nothing there except a record that they paid a bill one day at Walmart for medications or whatever. Now we have to catch up and put together materials to support our duty-related injuries. That's not often easy.
Remember that we had no involvement with Veterans Affairs until after October 2001 or 2002. After that, a serving member of the forces and the Mounted Police could collect a disability pension for pain and suffering while serving. Prior to that time, even though we had been with them since 1948, we weren't really taught about them, or we didn't know what they did, because they had nothing to do with us until we went to pension. That changed a bit in 2002, but there has never been a good education component, and the transition interview is critical to filling that gap.
The other thing is the continual taking back of money through the vacancies that are run in the health services program. That has to stop. Do you know how they allocate the health care money for the Mounted Police? They give it to them based on how much they spent the year before. That tells you how we funded health care for the Mounted Police during the last number of years. I'd like to see that money protected. It needs to be there for health care. God, we can't even collect data. Do you know that the only way my force can tell you any reasonable numbers on post-traumatic stress or a couple of other disabilities, including depressive disorders, anxiety and depression, and anxiety disorders? Those are the top four in our organization, and they result in....
I just read a psychologist's comment to me the other day. It said 60% to 75% of our sick members are suffering from occupational stress injuries. VAC will support that, in a way, because if you look at the VAC numbers for our 8,000 claims, the largest percentage of those are for post-traumatic stress.
I call the Mounties and ask what we have for numbers. The only way they can verify any numbers is to call Veterans Affairs and ask them what they are making payments on, and that's no good, because the only numbers Veterans Affairs has are those that are successful. It's not about who is in the system, who is getting in the system, who has failed, or who is appealing the system. We can collect statistics on how long somebody has been going through the same stop sign, yet we can't give anything back. That goes for suicide as well.
I implore you to look at that. I'm going to suggest that our suicide numbers are down, but I can sit here and give you four or five. Most of our people kill themselves with their own tools. Paul Smith is but one of the most recent casualities. Paul's casualty was a self-inflicted gunshot wound. His wife is now in possession of a pension because Paul was killed as a result of his duty-related injury. Now, you unwrap that one.
This is the way it goes all the time.
There are a number of inherent issues with Veterans Affairs. One is that we don't get the feeling that they know us. The position on the liaison is critical. In all fairness, the guy wasn't treated very well in Ottawa. They might as well have stuck him a building and let him roam around until he did his week and then went back home, but our guy embedded in Charlottetown was treated like a king. He went to all the meetings. He was part of the process.
There needs to be a maturity in this area within the upper crust of my organization. I'm not speaking out of school here. I've told them all pretty much the same thing during the year. This is not the first time I have spoken to and or about my employer in relation to this issue. What's going on here needs to be fixed.