Thank you.
My mom just recently broke her hip, so it's been a bit of a challenging time. As a physician, I have to do an absolute shout-out, if I can, for Alberta Health Services. Of course, living here in Ottawa, it's at those moments that you're devastated at being so far away. Foothills Hospital was amazing. Carewest was amazing. I know that Carewest does a lot of work for veterans in Calgary and Edmonton. I had the chance to spend a month down there, and I want to do a shout-out for the work and for the health services.
There's no question that none of us can do this alone. It's a team effort. It's always been a bit hard. Especially for a lot of women veterans, although we have family we don't always have as much support and caregiving as some of the males get. It's often assumed that we're independent and that we can take care of ourselves, so a lot of women, especially, are more likely to be divorced, widowed, single or what I call “functionally” single. That's especially the military women who are married, about 85% of whom are married to military men. Again, often you have family, but then your own family could be deployed or away or have their mental health issues as well. I think it's often even more of a challenge for women.
I think Stats Canada recently showed that at least three out of 10 veterans are single. We know that the women are even more likely than the men to be single, and even more so as we grow older. It isn't just our biological family. It's also often our family of choice—our peer group, our fellow veterans. It takes a whole community to help support us.
Thank you for that shout-out, and thank you for that opportunity to...as a Calgary girl.