That's a fantastic question because what my mandate letter actually asks me to do is to ensure that we have diversity and openness to all people in the Canadian Armed Forces. I believe that our recruitment and our retention efforts have to ensure that we are keeping diversity and inclusion at the top of mind at all times.
We need in any year about 7,000 regular force members to meet our operational readiness target in the Canadian Armed Forces. What we are doing to meet that is focusing engagement activities across Canada to increase women's enrolment by prioritizing women applicants at military colleges and mentoring cadets, and enhancing women's care and family leaves.
What are these efforts going to do? They are going to, hopefully, attract a more diverse pool of applicants to the Canadian Armed Forces, so we will have more and more women and diverse individuals moving up the ranks so they are qualified to fulfill leadership positions within the Canadian Armed Forces.
That is a priority for me. Whenever I speak with the chief of defence staff, Wayne Eyre, I mention this because of the importance, not only to the Canadian Armed Forces but to the Canadian population at large. Our forces should reflect the diversity that we see in the broader Canadian public.