Sure.
Currently, VAC allows for some counselling for family members, provided that the veteran is alive and engaging in treatment. What happened to start the petition is that a family member was receiving funded treatment from VAC, had an established relationship with a psychologist and was getting much-needed support. Unfortunately, their veteran committed suicide, and she was immediately cut off from her mental health treatment at a very vulnerable time. She had the bravery to walk into a town hall with the veteran ombud and confront her with the situation that she couldn't believe was happening to her. The ombud provided the answer that this was contained in a report from 2021—family members needed to have mental health treatment, funded by VAC, in their own right, not as a caregiver to the veteran.
Despite being recommended in 2021 and being agreed to by VAC in the media and in spotlight reports following up on the initial report, we haven't seen any movement to allow this. Often, what we hear is pointing to the VAC assistance service, which is equivalent to an employee assistance program. You're not guaranteed to get a psychologist or anyone who is particularly specified in the area that you're seeking assistance with.
The petition was really a simple call to pay attention to this report from 2021, which asked for this simple thing.
Furthermore, in our research since we started this, we realized that really the veteran ombud was talking about it back in 2016. This is why I say it's been a decade since we understood that families have service-related impacts and very badly need access to their own mental health treatment for those impacts.