National Defence committee  That's correct.

National Defence committee  Correct. There are a few ways. There's the charitable return, of course, because we're all registered charities. We have to do a charitable return every year. As well, if you were a donor, we would educate you about where we were going to provide the dollars. All of our fundraised dollars and the donor dollars went to casual child care for our deployed families, which addressed the burnout of a lot of solo parenting for a very, very long tour.

National Defence committee  Yes, and we educate the community about where the dollars will go. That's an enhancement of the program. Currently the mandated program does not cover that.

National Defence committee  I don't either.

National Defence committee  Correct. There's some eligibility requirements in order for them to be served. That's not to say that they won't be served, but only if they meet those eligibility requirements, which, when you're a family working with someone with an operational stress injury, the last thing you want to do is navigate through another system.

National Defence committee  Certainly there are relationships built between operational stress injury clinics and the MFRCs. But something that my colleague Theresa and I have been working on at the army bases are these transitional support units or casualty support units, with the concept in mind that it's very exciting for families because there's a recognized need for supports for the families themselves.

National Defence committee  Locally I don't have the stats on that, but Theresa may have some.

National Defence committee  Correct.

National Defence committee  As I said in my presentation, I think our provincial services, at this point, are very much saturated with civilian people. I think that would oversaturate them. I made the philosophical statement that military families, I believe, deserve exceptional service. I believe that with my whole heart, because I believe they have sacrificed the same as our Canadian Forces members have.

National Defence committee  In my presentation I talked specifically about the operational stress injury clinics. Currently we have six that have been set up across Canada. They in particular will see the family only if they have a diagnosis or a referral from the Canadian Forces. What I'm saying is that for specific things, especially operational stress injuries, that are very much connected to direct military service, the families need to be served.

National Defence committee  Absolutely. There's no question that when a family goes to an operational stress injury clinic, regardless of the situation with the member, they deserve to be served.

National Defence committee  For Gagetown, our overall budget is about $1.5 million and we have about $756,000 from DND. The rest is realized through user fees, fundraising, and our local command support.

National Defence committee  I think it has to be a multi-organizational responsibility that involves DND. I believe VAC has a role to play, especially for our veterans' families. And certainly the military family resource centre has a role to play. I think it has to be a multi-organizational responsibility.

National Defence committee  I'd like to respond to the first statement, actually, going back to the families. I don't have any research or numbers, but this is what I often share with members of the chain of command. Gagetown is both a deployable base and a training base, one of the largest training bases in Canada.

National Defence committee  Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you very much for the invitation to be here today. Listening to my colleagues, I'm inspired by the program I'm involved in. My name is Beth Corey. I'm executive director of the Gagetown military family resource centre located at CFB Gagetown, in a nice little place called Oromocto, New Brunswick.