Thank you to the witnesses. I'm not normally a member of the committee—I'm an occasional replacement—but I found this very interesting. I thank each of you for your testimony today.

I want to focus on recruitment. A lot of my questions have already been addressed. I want to focus, though, on military service. And thank you again to each of you.

It's not for everyone. My father was a vet and my uncles were vets of the Second World War. They did not make a career of the military. There were six boys and they all made it back safely. My father was in the army and my uncles were in the navy. What I experienced, as a parliamentarian, was four or five days in the military. I chose the army first, in Wainwright, and then I went into the navy on the Winnipeg. I quickly found that I didn't like the navy and the repetitive nature of the navy, but I thought it would have been very interesting to have had a career in the army. But, again, I didn't know what I would have been getting into if I would have chosen that as a career. That was a common theme—that people didn't know what they were getting into.

Mr. Lerat, you mentioned loneliness. You recommended that there be indigenous people in recruitment, but Ms. Pope said that she experienced isolation, an extremely unhealthy environment, to the point where she left. She talked about loneliness and felt that she needed that mentor person as she went through that.

My question is this. Is it for everyone? How do we properly let people who are indigenous know better what they're committing to? You said you didn't know what you were getting into, yet you liked it. How do you screen people and let them know this is what the life in the military, in the Canadian Forces, is going to be like so that people know what they're getting into? Would it be helpful if in the recruitment they were actually being mentored at the front end? They would get into it and be supported in all of these practical ways, and people would know what they were getting into. Would that be helpful?

Mark Warawa

Transcript

Discussions (0)