National Defence committee  As an organization, we do our own private fundraising, as I think Clay has indicated. We have a budget of $75,000 this year, and basically that money is used to house and feed all our volunteers, who actually donate a week of their vacation to come up and be part of this whole thing.

National Defence committee  We were able to find eight soldiers who could take part.

National Defence committee  That's one of the reasons we're here, to inform you. We have everything: we have all the volunteers; it's at no cost to the Canadian government, no cost to the participants. Basically all we need to do is find a way to get to these soldiers and help them. That's where we are right now.

National Defence committee  Starting off, in our first year we were able to gather six participants, and it went up to 10 or 11 in the second and third year. This year, because of the fundraising that we've done through public organizations that have supported us, we're looking to get at least 20 soldiers and their families this year.

National Defence committee  Not at all.

National Defence committee  Cheryl, could you ask that question about getting the notice to them again, please, so that I have it clear?

National Defence committee  When we have a soldier who goes off to war and he's gone for 18 months and comes back with no legs, we feel that maybe there's a bit of trauma there for the spouse and the children getting their father back. What we have tried to do is to invite the spouse to also partake in that whole week.

National Defence committee  What happens, if you're part of Soldier On and are part of their event, is that they go to the commanding officer and are granted that whole week with pay to come to the winter sports clinic. However, if they come through us, they can go to their commanding officer, but they may not get an official leave.

National Defence committee  For this event, it's soldiers and veterans.

National Defence committee  I'll interject here. It's Soldier On that decides. This year they decided on one clinic in Canada, and they're running it at Mount Washington, but they're doing an international event at Whistler. But they decide where they're going to have the venue, so that's basically really still controlled by Soldier On.

National Defence committee  Can I just interject—

National Defence committee  I just wanted to add that when we first started this, when I came back from Colorado a number of years ago and I wanted to start this whole program, we talked about a national event, like we do in Snowmass, Colorado every year. We've done it for the last 28 years. We were told that Canada is too big; we would have to run regional programs.

National Defence committee  It's basically just by word of mouth. I'm trying to even find the right people in JPSU to be able to put it forward. We do have a number of names this year from JPSU, and we're certainly going to give them the information that's available. It's just more of the knowledge getting out there to the people to let them know that this is available, and it just seems to stop at the front door.

National Defence committee  We have run an adaptive ski school in Calabogie for the past 10 years. We have 40 participants. We have 80 volunteers who basically work with.... It's an eight-week program, and we bring children from age 3, 4, 5, whatever, to teach them the same thing. What we're teaching here is not the skiing; it's the self-esteem we're teaching.

National Defence committee  I just did a presentation to all of the eastern Ontario schools for special ed, and basically it's exactly what you say. But we encourage all the schools to do it, because we have the facility. We just finished building—thank you to the federal government for the accessibility grant—a $350,000 facility to assist.