“There is a reluctance to treat this as a crisis,” said NDP defence critic Jack Harris Wednesday, “but that’s what it is. We are trying to deal with it in a patchwork fashion and we need to find a better way.”
In an interview with the Citizen, Harris slammed the Conservative government for announcing a $110-million annual training budget for Afghan soldiers while returning Canadian veterans are suffering from inadequate mental health care.
Earlier this week, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that Canada would contribute $110 million a year to build the Afghan army just weeks after his government cut the budget of Veterans Affairs Canada and slashed jobs of research professionals involved in suicide prevention and monitoring post-traumatic stress disorders.
“What about our soldiers we asked to go there?” said Harris. “The cost for their treatment should be made part of the entire mission. Instead of laying people off, we should be dealing with the problem and doing everything we can to make them whole again.”
Harris vowed to continue pressuring the government when Parliament resumes sitting next week.
The health research cuts came on the heels of a report indicating the number of suicides is increasing in the Canadian Forces and at a time when suicide and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is the subject at a Military Police Complaints Commission hearing in Ottawa.
That hearing is examining how the Canadian Forces dealt with the case of Cpl. Stuart Langridge, an Afghanistan veteran who hanged himself four years ago.
“If you get rid of the people who find the problems,” said Harris, “the chance of finding a solution diminishes.”
The Newfoundland and Labrador MP said he was shocked to read the Citizen story late last week of Afghan vet Master Cpl. Jonathan Woolvett who was ‘kidnapped’ by his father Greg from Canadian Forces Base Petawawa.
Greg Woolvett told the Citizen he took his troubled son to a non-military treatment facility in Windsor, Ont., because he was suicidal and not receiving adequate care from the military.
“He was a dead man walking,” said Woolvett.
Jonathan, an infantryman, did two tours of duty in Afghanistan and was diagnosed with PTSD.
“In the aftermath of the suicide of Cpl. Stuart Langridge,” said Harris, “I am shocked that the families of Canadian Forces members must continue to be concerned with the adequacy of care their loved ones are receiving.
“It’s a terrible story,’ he added, “but it’s another story indicating we have a serious problem with the approach we are taking to treatment. We need to be more sensitive to the needs of people with these symptoms.”
Harris said he was also troubled by the military’s continued insistence that Langridge was not suffering from PTSD but from alcohol and drug abuse.
It’s a bold statement in the face of a lot of evidence that the two are connected,” he said.
Harris, who as a lawyer, represented traumatized victims at the Mount Cashel Orphanage Inquiry in the 1990s, conceded the government has made some positive moves to help veterans.
“But they haven’t got it right,” he said, “A task force would help us see where the pieces are missing.”
Source: ottawa citizen
Author: Chris Cobb
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