Madam Chair, thank you very much for this question, because in my other role, I am the defence champion for women, as I know you are aware.
With that, I thought I would give you the context of women in Operation Laser. I'm going to use health services as the example because, currently, with the about 18 different occupations that reside within health services, we're at about a fifty-fifty men and women division.
Throughout Operation Laser, we had about 1,772 personnel, both regular and reserve force, who were either actively engaged in all facets of Operation Laser or on standby in order to deploy. Out of those 1,700-plus people, over 700 were women. When we look at the actual work directly in long-term care facilities, of the health services personnel who were deployed—and there were about 729—393 were women. That is a good example of where the Canadian Armed Forces really has integrated gender into operations, whether it be domestically or internationally as General Cadieu has said, everywhere from leadership positions through to being key members of our team from the army, the navy or air force. With Operation Laser, we have integrated women fully into everything that's been done.