Again, it's one of those jobs that is the exact opposite of the rest of the public service. Our stress increases with years of service. This is one of the reasons why we push very hard on a pension to allow us to retire early, because these daily stressors that we have, they just continue to be cumulative over years of service. At some point it's going to catch up to you. I remember one officer describing to me that he had witnessed over the course of his career 14 murders. Eventually, it's going to take its toll. Those are examples where it's very difficult.
Our life expectancy, quite honestly, is not very high. There have been some studies done, certainly some American studies, and it's not high because of the cumulative stress that we endure and the occupational stress that we endure over the course of a 25-year or 30-year career. Some officers, they're fine. They go through 35 years, they walk out that door and they say, I've had the most satisfying career of my life. It's been wonderful. And then some officers.... This is why we want to get into the resilience piece, it's to build that resilience up, because some officers don't handle it as well as other officers. Gord and I see that regularly where we know officers who go into work and, it's no problem, this is my job and I'm proud to do my work, and then there are other officers who are proud to do their work, it's just that they don't receive the assistance they need when they're going through those stressful periods.
Sometimes we're like this, we're like a roller coaster. We could have a spike in incidents in an institution, and then all of a sudden it evens out and keels out for awhile, and then there could be another spike. This is, again, a huge stressor on correctional officers.
To say that it's a career where sometimes people are able to do it for that long, and other members.... Gord described an earlier situation where there was an officer suffering from mental stress, and in his case he felt like his employer was abandoning him, and they wanted to pension him off and get rid of him. This guy was basically saying, look, all I want to do is work. I still want to work, I still like my job. I just need the help to get back. We shouldn't be considered null and void if we suffer from a mental stress injury.