We deal with a huge number of military members. A large number of military members use their military family resource centre every day.
It's a safe place for them to go; it's not in the chain of command. If they're just having a family issue, they would rather come and talk to us and access our services than go through the chain of command, because it could adversely impact their military career. So if it's a family issue that doesn't affect their ability to deploy or do their job, they come and access our services. They also make up the bulk of our volunteers, so they are actively engaged in providing education, resources, and services to our families--because who knows better?
I also want to mention that I am a retired member. I spent 21 years in uniform. I've certainly seen the changes, and I've seen the change in recognizing how vital and important the family is--but it's the whole family, the member and everybody. To say we only serve families means that when I say families, I mean everybody in that unit, not just the person in uniform.
One of the things we've seen, of course, is a lot of fatigue in the families around deployment, and frustration. We're seeing a lot more challenges with children dealing with the absence of a loved one. The navy is getting smaller and the navy is deploying more. The navy was gone for a couple of years during Operation Apollo, so I can really speak a lot about that.
We've had a tremendous number of our army and our supportive trades go to Afghanistan, and I'm seeing the challenges they're facing. The biggest thing is that I'm getting this huge sense of deployment fatigue, the feeling that they just don't want to have to go through the absence of the military member again. Of course, that leads to all kinds of other challenges. With the children, of course, during the absence of a loved one, all kinds of issues occur.
We're seeing more and more things happening with the children around deployment, and we're seeing this real sense of fatigue in the member and the family.