That's a very good question.
I've worked across this province all the way up to James Bay, where there were four of us looking after Moosonee. The young aboriginal paramedics who worked with me often picked up their family members, and it was very traumatic to them. We would try to support them as best we could. I often saw that with the OPP there would only be a certain number of officers there, but if something happened, as quickly as you could you would bring other officers in.
I think we're very good at supporting each other. I'm from Kingston, and if my neighbouring service, a little Napanee service in Lennox and Addington County, has an incident, I'll send paramedic officers over to offer relief and all kinds of assistance, but it certainly is a problem. It's not only a problem of getting them off and making sure that they have some down time. It's also a question of where the resources are in some of the remote areas of this country. How do you deal with an incident somewhere in Yukon? Is there a psychologist available, or do we have to parachute one in from somewhere? Those are some of the concerns that we also see. What level of treatment do we need to bring so that they can get healthy and get back to work? Each one is individual. Two partners may see the same incident and one may be off for two days and one may be gone for two months. It's a matter of how you're affected. It's a question of what that incident meant to you personally.