Brigadier General Colleen Forestier

Director Health Services Strategic Concepts Canadian Forces Health Services

Colonel 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 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 was promoted to her current rank in 2017 and has had the pleasure of serving as the Director of Mental Health (2017-2019), as the Director of Health Services Operations (2020- 2022), and most recently 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. Colonel Forestier completed her medical degree at the University of Western Ontario in 1996 and a Family Medicine Residency at the University of Calgary in 1998. In 2014 she earned the Certificate of Special Competence Emergency Medicine (CCFP (EM)). She is a graduate of the Canadian Forces College National Security Program (2020) and holds both a Masters of Public Health and a Masters of Public Administration. Committed to lifelong learning, she has recently taken up fly-fishing and guitar lessons. According to her husband and daughter, she excels at neither of them.