One point I'd like to make is that the success I've witnessed has really been centred on collaboration between various organizations within that veteran transition realm. I'm speaking to Treble Victor, VTAC, and even VETS Canada, where I think ultimately the bigger-picture effort is changing the discussion, changing the focus of the debate around veterans in business or veterans in transition.
It's something that, speaking to your earlier point about stigma.... So long as we concentrate on all the negatives, we sometimes forget the potential for positives. Unfortunately, sometimes the centre of the discussion is more divisive versus more collaborative.
When there's division, as I experienced in Afghanistan.... If I had disagreed with my DFAIT colleague and my CIDA colleague, no one would have benefited from the distribution of assistance for the population. Instead, when we were more aligned and were able to come together and collaborate on those very important issues—everyone had an agenda, of course—we were able to actually have that impact at the end of the day.
Enabling those grassroots organizations, that bottom-up approach, and encouraging an environment in which organizations and people can work together towards a common goal of making sure that the generation that I'm a part of, the generation of young veterans, can succeed, that's really important. Because sometimes the barriers are ones that we put in place ourselves, but sometimes those are more easily dismantled than you might think.