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Drs Forestier and Pedlar will present the findings of Exercise Trillium Cura (ETC).  In 2024, ETC was a tabletop simulation of how the health system in Ontario, along with a wide range of partners, would cope with the inflow of casualties from a prolonged conventional war while maintaining care for civilians. The result of six months of planning and development by a civilian-military team, Trillium Cura brought together 45 in-person participants and 27 observers from across the country using wargame techniques to simulate the flow of a wide-range of wounded into Ontario while maintaining current clinical volumes. 

After two days, ETC demonstrated a wide range of problems along with some successes. During the exercise, participants underscored that lessons learned from COVID-19 were not enough to respond to the unique challenges presented by a sustained mass casualty event. Despite this, key problems or challenges were predictable: the importance civilian military health system collaboration, clear leadership, and the need for critical and human resources. Perhaps most importantly, the exercise surfaced several activities we could rapidly undertake now to be better prepared.

Our public health and health systems will continue to face crises and must withstand the broad challenges we face, whether external like the threat in ETC or internal like wildfires or floods that breach city limits.  

 

     

 

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Bios:

Brigadier General (BGen) Forestier currently serves as Director General Clinical Services in the Canadian Armed Forces. Prior to this position, she was Director Health Services Strategic Concepts Canadian Forces Health Services. BGen Forestier enrolled in the Canadian Armed Forces in 2003 as a direct entry medical officer after working as a rural family physician in southern Alberta. She was first posted to 1 Field Ambulance and in 2006 to the Canadian Special Operations Regiment as a Medical Officer.

She has been employed in a number of medical advisory and medical staff positions including Command Surgeon for the Canadian Special Operations Command, senior Staff Officer for Medical Policy and Standards, Regional Surgeon for Joint Task Force Atlantic in Halifax, and Canadian Joint Operations Command Surgeon.

She served as the Director of Mental Health (2017-2019), as the Director of Health Services Operations (2020- 2022), and then as Director Health Services Strategic Concepts. Her deployment experience includes a tour in Kandahar, Afghanistan in 2005/06 as part of the Provincial Reconstruction Team during Op ARCHER, and in March 2015 she served as the Task Force Commander for Op SIRONA in Sierra Leone, the Canadian Armed Forces contribution to the fight against the Ebola Virus in West Africa.

BGen Forestier completed a Family Medicine Residency at the University of Calgary in 1998, earned the Certificate of Special Competence Emergency Medicine (CCFP (EM)), and is a graduate of the Canadian Forces College National Security Program (2020).

 

Dr. David Pedlar is a Professor in the School of Rehabilitation Therapy, Queens University and Senior Scientist at the University of Ottawa, Institute for Mental Health Research at the Royal Hospital. He is a distinguished researcher and thought leader with an impressive track record advancing veteran, military and family health research and policy in Canada and internationally. He is a two-time Fulbright Canada recipient, as scholar and research chair. He has played a pivotal role in shaping veteran health research in Canada, securing major funding, and leading multiple international collaborations.

Since retiring as the Scientific Director of the Canadian Institute for Military and Veteran Heath Research (2017-2024), he continues to serve as their Strategic Research Advisor.  He has advised governments and institutions worldwide, including serving as the Strategic Research Advisor to scientific advisory boards and international health systems working groups. His leadership in veteran mental health research extends globally, with key roles in Canada, the U.S., the U.K., Australia, and beyond.