Thank you both very much for coming. It's actually quite enlightening to hear your views on an issue that all of us, as committee members, take very seriously.
I'm not going refer to areas that you raised, although I may come back to them, as much as to ask questions. A lot of changes continue to be made and people do endeavour to make improvements as things come up, and a lot of things have gone on. As the direction continues to change, I'm trying to find out what your sense is on where we are making progress and where we have to work harder and so on.
Specifically, one of the challenges for many of us who are rural members, as we hear the issues that you raise, is that it's a very elusive thing to try to find both the resources and the links that can take place in a rural area. As a matter of fact, many of us can attest that it's going in quite the opposite direction in rural Canada in many areas, and it's a very challenging issue for us to face that.
I will go to you first, Ms. Baker. In your experience, in a research capacity, you ran into some real examples. Did you see evidence of where progress had been made or other attempts have been made where we should focus on making more use of that, or do you think it's simply lacking?
The reason I ask is that we've heard a lot of witnesses over time, and in some cases they are saying, “If there were more of this” or “If there were more focus on that”, because many initiatives between DND and Veterans Affairs have tried to move in the direction of capturing the people while they're in active service and identifying in peer support groups, recognition groups, and family support centres and what have you, and again, less so in the rural areas.... Are there examples of where you see evidence of some improvement or recognition taking place that we should be thinking more of how to support, or are you talking about basically starting afresh?