Thank you for coming. This has been very informative. I really feel there's a disconnect between some of the reports we got from some of the higher-ups and what you actually see on the ground, and it's some of this stuff that I'm hearing in my office as well. So it's nice to hear it and to have it confirmed. I wish I didn't have to hear it. Unfortunately we are hearing it and it is confirmed.
Now, there are some major sacrifices made by individual soldiers. They're shifted around. They have to change every so often, and especially when there are children involved.... Sometimes you have family nearby and you can send them to family. Obviously when you're shifted around, you don't have that capacity so there's an issue of day care. When I hear six months to two years, that pretty well caps a salary on a spouse, which puts financial hardship on our enlisted men and women, which is really not a hardship we should be looking at.
The other one I know is out there is the reluctance to engage MFRCs within the decision process or a feedback mechanism.
I have a whole list of questions, but I'm going to limit it to two. Are there any estimates on how many day care spaces we would need nationwide to service our serving men and women so that their spouses would have the ability to go out and get a second income or maybe a primary income, depending on what the spouse does, so they would start off at the same level as most Canadians?
The other question is that there's the reluctance to engage MFRCs. In your opinion, what is stopping them from engaging you in the process? Is it a turf war? Is it embarrassment? I'm at a loss there. I'd just like to know exactly what it is that is stopping them from engaging.