Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good afternoon.
That was a very engaging and a very detailed presentation, and very energetic. I can understand why your resource centre and many others are very successful across Canada. It's because we have such dedicated people committed to our military in some way, shape, or form.
I note that you say military families are the strength behind the uniform; I would say that military families are also going to be the strength once they're out of uniform. While you say your mandate does not deal with those people who are out of uniform, so to speak, we know there's a continuum from those who are trained and serve and are deployed through to when they come out.
Those serving military people and families you're dealing with now are going to be virtually the same group of people--maybe a little older, maybe with more life experience and different life experiences--that Veterans Affairs is going to have to deal with at some point, so we have to move now. What lessons can we take from you and the experience you have with various military personnel and military families that will help us prepare VA for what's to come?
You mentioned that even within your own context, one part of the Canadian Forces doesn't talk to the other part of the Canadian Forces, or one organization that deals with these particular issues may not share information. We don't want to make that mistake and somehow not understand what's coming to us in Veterans Affairs. This leads me to a couple of a questions.
First, how much interaction do you have directly with a military person, whether man or woman? I know you deal with families in the unit, so sometimes it's maybe not the military personnel, but maybe the wife, the spouse, the partner, or the kids. Is there a lot of use of the military family resource centres by those serving in uniform?
I also wanted to ask what your experience has been over the last two or three years. Have you noticed any differences? Because of the Afghanistan situation, there seems to be extra stress on our troops. Rotation is an issue. We understand, although there haven't been a lot of studies conducted, that more people are dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder. Are you seeing that?
If there's a marked change in terms of what you're observing and dealing with, I'm going to make a bit of a leap and say there's going to be a bit of change in what Veterans Affairs is going to have to deal with and the types of support and services that we're going to have to provide in terms of health care and maybe even support for families.
Those are my questions.