There's a challenge currently in health care, not only in the military but also in the country overall, as you know. There's an increase in demand overall for health care, especially mental health services, that is challenging the system overall. There are just not enough mental health care providers in the country currently to meet the demand. Obviously that is impacting us as well, because our members are a sample of Canadian society, so that demand for health care has increased also.
That trend started, by the way, before the pandemic, and it was just exacerbated during the pandemic. I think there's a new set of stigmas that are not as present as before from a health care perspective, which is good. I think it's going to bring more people into care earlier, which probably will improve the overall outcome of all those people who are suffering with mental health issues, but this need is currently creating a lot of pressure on our systems.
We're obviously still trying to recruit as much as we can to have our piece of it, if you will, from the perspective of mental health care providers. We currently have 50 active hiring processes going on through our contractor, Calian, to bring in additional mental health professionals. It's not easy, because we're in competition, obviously, with our colleagues from the provinces, and we can't afford to steal everything from them either. We need to share in some ways.
What we're doing, although internally, is trying to re-look at our program and at the way we deliver mental health care to see if we can become more efficient, if we can “responsibilize” more patients and if we can stick to our patients less than we are currently. All of that is part of what we're doing.
There are lots of applications online now, for example, to do some mental health treatment, if you will. We need to capitalize on that. I think that would save resources for us and allow us to treat more people if we do that. However, it's an ongoing challenge that we're working on actively.