Sure. One of the things that you might not know with that is that there is legislation out there to protect jobs while people deploy. That can be a double-edged sword. When you look down in the States, employers know to look for that, and now on a lot of employment applications in the States it says, “Are you a member of the Guard? Are you a member of the Reserves?” That can be a double-edged sword, but I tell you—this is another interesting thing—the vast majority of people in the reserves are class A, so what you would think of as a reservist, on weekends, one evening a month in the summer, that kind of thing. Then you have class B, which is where they get pulled in to fill a full-time spot and put on a full-time contract.
You may not know that those jobs are not protected while they deploy. If you think about the irony of that, the government and the military asks the civilian sector to protect the jobs of their reservists while they deploy, but the reservist who put in full-time jobs back here in Canada, they do not protect them while they deploy. Most people will have to give their job up to go, and the answer you always get is, “Oh, it's a professional term of service; it's not a job that you were in.” Just be aware that those in the Canadian Forces are one of the biggest culprits of unemploying reservists when they come back from their tours.
What do we do about it?
Right now, we're in this situation where generally the battalion you used to be in phoned you after a couple of months, and that's a good thing. Your home unit will do as much as they can, which is also a good thing and shouldn't end. I look to what my friend on the left, Kurt, here said, and he said it in stages, and the order of what he said is important, so focus on this part, if any. You come home and you need the break, because someone briefs you on the plane coming home or the day after. We could make a laundry list of things you're thinking about then, but it isn't this. You need the time to get back, repair the body, repair the mind, get into a physical routine, and let the kids get used to you. Then we take you into the education piece of how to be healthy and how to assess your own health.
You're not going to be in that frame of mind on day one, and you're also not going to be in a position to be looking for a job in the last month of being on tour. One of the biggest things that kills you on tour is thinking about things other than your tour. We cannot have reservists thinking, a week before they come home, “Oh my God, I'm on this patrol but I'm really thinking, am I let go from my job?” That's where we need to go. That's what I think.