We owe our veterans more

Canada needs to do more to understand the mental scars of our service men and women

For 12 long years, Canada sent men and women serving in this country’s armed forces on various military missions to Afghanistan. Three-and-a-half years after the Canadian flag was formally lowered in Kabul in March, 2014, ending this country’s official involvement in what’s still a war zone, the aftershocks — in the thousands of veterans collecting disability benefits for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) — continue to be heard across the nation.

There’s no question Ottawa has stepped up efforts in recent years to improve mental health supports for both those now serving and veterans, although it has still not been nearly enough.

More help was promised in the federal budget last spring, including investing — beginning in 2018-19 — $17.5 million over four years to create a centre of excellence on PTSD and related mental health disorders.

This summer, the Canadian Forces accepted all 11 recommendations of an expert panel reviewing the military’s mental health programs, including hiring a suicide-prevention co-ordinator. The military is reportedly working with Veterans Affairs on a joint suicide-prevention strategy to be rolled out this fall. Canada’s shame is that it’s taken this long to attempt to do right by the men and women this country put into harm’s way.

And despite what’s been announced, more can be done.

We’d start by echoing what we and many others have long called for — a fatality inquiry into the case of Lionel Desmond, the 33-year-old Afghan war veteran suffering from PTSD who last January killed his mother, Brenda, 52, wife, Shanna, 31, and daughter Aaliyah, 10, at their home in Upper Tracadie before committing suicide.

If the province won’t call such an inquest, the federal government — to underline its seriousness in tackling the issue of PTSD among veterans — should strike its own public inquiry into the Desmond case and other suicides linked to the mission in Afghanistan.

No stone should be left unturned in learning more about the mental scars left by that conflict.

Such an inquiry could suggest new answers in terms of what still needs to be done.

Canada owes its serving men and women, and its veterans, that much.