Basically, my experience is that I survived. I'm healthy and happy. I see that the military has also done a lot of changing. I came in at a very rough time. Reservists were not even paid. I didn't get paid for the first nine months. Now they have some comparable pay. I worked with the medical organization. When the health services left all of the other elements and became part of their own health services group, their credentials started to matter. It took a couple of years, but the paramedics, nurses, etc., were already qualified. There has been large improvement.
I did spend 2020 working with the defence visible minority advisory group. I was the national co-chair. Some changes were happening then, but of late, with the 2022 advisory panel that I was on, we were still dealing with some of the old stuff, with employment equity and those kinds of things. It's improved, but at a snail's pace. You're going to lose your people, and you're going to lose the Canadian citizens unless it feels like an act of urgency. People are out there hurting.
Before me there was a woman named Master Warrant Officer Sarah Hayward from Nova Scotia—she was from Cape Breton, by the way—who was the only Black woman I saw of any rank. There was nothing—nothing—for her, ever, but if there was something to help her out at this particular time, I would do the volunteer time. I keep doing the volunteer time, because nobody else is lifting it up.
Just talk to the people. I'll see you at the No. 2 celebration.