Since 2009, the Standing Committee on National Defence issued a report which provided both an assessment of the government’s CAF mental health strategy and 36 concrete recommendations to address the issues and gaps they found. Recommendations, everything from prevention to early identification to addressing stigma to providing support and integrating resources, finding ways to make sure that the medical professionals are hired and available and that the assessments continue over the course of years and that the military reservists are included.
Four and a half years later, this report gathers dust on a shelf in the minister’s office. Many of the recommendations, I would say most of the recommendations, have not been implemented and there has not been a single follow-up report from the government.
In 2012, the Canadian Forces Ombudsman recommended that the Canadian Forces evaluate its “capacity” to respond to the PTSD/OSI challenge and to address the “palpable and growing tension between commander and clinician relative to OSI medical treatment and administrative support”. Yet the government seems to be caught by surprise, rushing forward to claim that now it will provide solutions, while remarkably still ignoring the fundamental issues that created these problems in the first place.
There is not only a lack of resources, there is a lack of care and a lack of intention to make this a priority. More than just ignoring the issue, the Conservative government has actively made it more difficult to provide adequate care to Canadian Armed Forces service members and veterans alike.
The ombudsman made recommendations to enable “more decisive leadership of the mental health system’s capacity to meet the OSI imperative”, yet we found out that in 2010, there was a hiring freeze. Therefore, the efforts made by the Surgeon General and military medical personnel to fill the gaps in medical professional care have been consistently and routinely blocked by that hiring freeze, which the government and the minister responsible chose to do absolutely nothing about.
Of the 12 recommendations made by the ombudsman to improve the treatment of injured reservists, only 4 were judged to have been fully implemented in his follow-up. That is 4 out of 12. That is a failing grade.
Contrary to its claims of unprecedented support – and more than one photo op, I might add – the government has failed to reach even the benchmarks for mental health professionals set in 2003 under a previous Liberal government, to say nothing of the new levels now needed after over a decade of engagement in Afghanistan, including in some of the most dangerous terrain.
Read more ... https://joycemurray.liberal.ca/blog/mp-joyce-murray-speech-parliament-standing-caf-members-veterans/#more-6137
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