CANADA FAILING INJURED SOLDIERS: OMBUDSMAN.
OTTAWA• Canada’ s growing number of ill and injured soldiers are being failed by an understaffed, overburdened system in desperate need of an immediate and radical overhaul, says military Ombudsman Gary Walbourne.
In an interview with the Ottawa Citizen, Walbourne praised a new, rapidly prepared and “brutally honest” report into the Joint Personnel Support Unit ( JPSU) ordered by Chief of Defence Staff Jonathan Vance, but says its conclusions are merely an acknowledgment of what critics of the unit have been saying for at least three years.
“These are not show stoppers,” Walbourne said of the report’s recommendations. “( But) I tip my hat to the CDS. He came in, saw this as a priority, and tackled it head on.”
The JPSU report, finished in September last year, notes that “we can and must do better.”
It addresses issues that Walbourne and his predecessor, Pierre Daigle, have been warning DND about f or several years and is the first time senior military have fully acknowledged that the complaints about JPSU are justified.
The ombudsman said he worries that as a swell of injured Afghanistan war veterans begins to enter the system, the report will either gather dust or that bureaucratic obstacles will block meaningful improvement.
He said he is also concerned that JPSU has yet to make it onto the agenda of the Armed Forces Council, the military’s senior body.
“I’m not going to sit here with my head in the sand,” he said. “Everyone is busy. I get it. However, we can’t continue to talk about these things. We’ve got to get this thing fixed.”
JPSU is an umbrella unit for 24 Integrated Personnel Support Centres ( IPSCs) across Canada and was created to offer programs to support and enable mentally and physically injured troops to resume their military careers or, more commonly, to make a gradual transition into the civilian world with sellable skills.
Critics praise the concept, but there has been overwhelming evidence that the units are understaffed, often with ill- trained personnel, and the ill and injured clients left for long periods to their own devices.
“It’s good to see it’s getting attention, but what’s the overarching strategy and who’s got the lead on this?” Walbourne said. “Who is co- ordinating the pieces? We continue to do the same thing and expect different results.”
WE CAN’T CONTINUE TO (JUST) TALK ABOUT THESE THINGS.