Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you. Thank you for those wonderful remarks. My testimony is going to be completely different. I'm here with my colleague, Sara MacNaull, who has just completed a study on flexibility and flexible work arrangements, including at several crown corporations. I'm here as a re

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I think that goes back to the whole concept of what we are hoping to achieve here. In part, what we're hoping to achieve is to ensure that all MPs not only have a healthy home life, healthy relationships, and a solid circle of support, but also that they are healthy and well them

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Let me also share with you a little bit from the language around “family friendly” and around “accommodation” and around “inclusive work environments”. Considering the whole question of accountability and transparency, I think we have to stop using the term “off”. Friday is not

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I think there are a couple of things that organizations have done, and in part it's becoming mindful of it and putting it front and centre. That means making sure that when you're planning meetings it's not always just sandwiches and that there is a juice bar. Why not? Companies

Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good afternoon, everyone. It's a pleasure to be here. The Vanier Institute of the Family is a national, independent, charitable organization dedicated to understanding the diversity and complexity of families and the reality of family life in Canada. W

Veterans Affairs committee  When we were founded by the Governor General, he felt that it would be important to have a funding mechanism that would be there in perpetuity and not necessarily at the whim of either the economy or the government in power at the time. He was wise enough to partner with the prim

Veterans Affairs committee  We have an annual budget of about $750,000. That covers all of the projects and the things we do. We have some alternative sources of funds that come from projects and contracts in government, and that kind of thing. By and large the base funding is covered through the endowment.

Veterans Affairs committee  I'll introduce my colleague, Russ Mann, who's a vet. He's working with us on this project, and he can perhaps add to the answer. One of the things that happens is that the academic researchers who gather all this information report in their academic journals. It could be of bene

Veterans Affairs committee  It's all across the country, coast to coast to coast, in both official languages in everything we do. The presentations are at conferences, meetings, workshops, and in the private sector. An employer, for example, may hire us to come to help their HR department or their senior e

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, we've been part of CIMVR since its inception. Annually, Russ and I have been playing host to a researchers' round table. Those round tables allow us to connect the researchers with the real life that's going on. We take that information back to the leadership circle and make

Veterans Affairs committee  I can comment on the research, and maybe Russ and Debbie can add to this, as well. I think there are good intentions. One of the challenges occurs when both the Department of Defence and Veterans Affairs try to handle the whole issue by themselves, when we already have community

Veterans Affairs committee  We need to make sure that we balance the prevention and early intervention with the crisis intervention. We want to prevent people from ending up on the street. We want to prevent people from ending up in the emergency department. When they do, we want the emergency department to

Veterans Affairs committee  Let me answer the second part first: what are we lacking? I think what's really clear in the research we've been doing, and in the consultations and the round tables that we've been privileged to be a part of, is that families often feel isolated and alone. This is about being

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, and the research shows very clearly that the health of the family is critical to the health of the veteran.

Veterans Affairs committee  We've identified a couple of things with the reservists. When we talk about military and veteran families, we include reservists in that umbrella. For us, when we talk to military families, they consider themselves a military family regardless of their status, whether they're rel