Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I first want to acknowledge the cadet program. We have some cadets in our area on Vancouver Island, and we appreciate those programs. We have the Beaufort Squadron air cadets on Vancouver Island, and they are very active. They have a review coming up very shortly. They always want me to be there for the reviews, but they're doing a good job.
Our multi-purpose coastal patrol vessels, like HMCS Nanaimo, are largely staffed by navy reservists, with a few regular forces. So we appreciate reservists in the navy that way. I guess our focus today is less on the navy. I'm not sure how much air force reserve is going on. I guess they are playing a role over there. But my questions are largely for the army reserve. Some of our colleagues have already picked up on these themes, but I'm still curious about something.
To pick up on where Mr. Blaney was going, when the reservist comes back--and they have up to 60 days of leave--they maintain contact. I'm trying to understand how this works. The ones who come back to the base....
We were just at Valcartier, and we saw the great supportive community that exists on the base with the families--the supports there and the networks that are available to them. They hang out together a lot; they're pretty close communities.
For the reservists, I'm a little concerned that they don't have such extensive support. I'm wondering about the time they spend with their reserve units. When they deploy, are only a handful of reservists from a unit actually deployed at a given time? They don't deploy the whole reservist unit. Could somebody maybe explain how that works?