Who is that person? Who is that guy? Yes. That's exactly the thing. There is already.... Well, I'll say it like this. What's really interesting to me is that all of the military investments right now are talking about dual use. They're going to build a hospital for a base in the north, but that hospital is going to serve the community. We already have this potential for a dual-use social infrastructure, which is groups like that, which benefit the participants but also benefit our civic resilience. I think it's a matter of some of these. They can self-identify and volunteer, and the others can be externally identified, but we want to bolster that in any way we possibly can.
I think what we may have seen, though, is a decrease in participation in a lot of those traditions. You named the Scouts. The Scouts and the Girl Guides don't have the same numbers they had in the past. I'm pretty sure of this. I think we just need to change our culture. “Maybe just change our culture.” That's a fun thing to say. How can we make it more habitual and dedicated, so that those are the priorities of participation for our kids forever on this, in any way?
This hasn't worked. Let's go back to what was working. There's nothing wrong with that. I'm not saying to go back and all be farmers, as awesome as that would be. We're not all going to do that.
How do we go back and participate in this existing social infrastructure? We'll have a better life because of it. I'm going to give you a quick example, because it changed my life.
During the virus time, I used to worry about millions of kids, and then I started worrying about dozens of people in my neighbourhood. We took over a volunteer ice rink. I didn't even skate. I just liked the idea of building something. I started worrying about dozens of people, and now we have a group of about 60 volunteers. We've done this new thing where we get together around a fire for a celebratory meal, and we cook.
People say they haven't done that before in their own communities. It's kind of sad, but it's also hopeful, because this is what we need to do. I think we lost that. It's just a matter of all of us putting in our own.... It's risky. It's risky to make new friends. It's risky to get into your community, but I think we all need to take that risk and build it back ourselves.