It's tricky. Civilians are allowed to march, obviously. There are about 40,000 who do march there. It's a bit of a lottery now because the demand is so high. They will take over 50,000 registrations. Then they'll have a lottery to parse that down to the numbers they can take based on the ability of the route to handle that many people. They've had larger numbers in certain years, so they've had to restrict and cap the number who can actually participate because there is a risk to health and safety.
For a civilian to join independently, it's no problem. It is a problem in terms of getting in because of the lottery aspect.
In terms of joining with us, the drawback would likely be access to the military camp. Again, we tend to have individuals who we sanction to join us, i.e., the VIPs, but to have any number of civilians showing up, they would not likely be welcome in the camp. You would lose that synergy with the contingent.
We have had people sign up on their own and march independently. We've met them outside the gate and marched with them for a day. That's happened on occasion. But I don't know that this would work.
What I would say, though, is that locally, on the years where our team might be coming from somewhere in your riding, to get out and march with them for five kilometres or ten kilometres—maybe don't go too far beyond that without more training—that would certainly be doable. It's the same for veterans. I think locally they could get out with a team that's in training and march, again for a shorter distance depending on their physical fitness and their abilities. That might be one way to tackle that.