Presently the MFRCs, the military family resource centres, are doing some initiatives to help support the families. They are developing networks of support so that people like Ms. Nash will perhaps have a clan or a network where they can help out with day care and extended leave care. The family centres need to not always follow the rules and regulations and policies in the military. They need to go outside of that and look at specific cases and ad lib as they go in order to support the individual cases with very particular situations.
One of the things I currently hear as I do the recruits across the country is that women have been from the get-go of their careers unrooted, derooted, uprooted from their families. They don't have the parents or the mothers-in-law to take care of their children. The MFRCs, most of their initiatives right now are addressing or targeting how to help women rather than also putting pressure on the men to help women. That's my primary focus, as well as things like the Silver Cross Mothers.
We have an initiative wherein a Silver Cross mother is chosen every year to lay a wreath on November 11 at the Cenotaph. This perpetuates the notion that women are the primary caregivers and more responsible for the children. We should have Silver Cross families or Silver Cross parents so that, first of all, the stigma is removed. Men should be treated fairly, too. We ought not perpetuate this idea that only women suffer when they lose a child. It also signals diversity. Our soldiers today have sometimes two fathers or two mothers or grandparents. How do you chose? Let's have Silver Cross parents, Silver Cross families.
By the way, I have suggested this to the Royal Canadian Legion, the Governor General, the Minister of National Defence, and the Minister of Veterans Affairs. They all got a letter from me, and yet we still have Silver Cross Mothers.