Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you for that question. I think the problem with not having a definition means that young, vulnerable new recruits, who enter the forces with bright eyes and expectations that they're going to serve their country proudly, don't know when they've been harmed, or if this is right, or if they should speak up.

Veterans Affairs committee  Could you repeat the beginning of the question? I couldn't hear you.

Veterans Affairs committee  Inflation is something that I feel personally. Through anecdotal evidence of what is happening in Nova Scotia, everything is more expensive. I think we can agree that when we go into the grocery store now, we see that everything is more expensive, which in turn makes everything we do more expensive.

Veterans Affairs committee  That is one barrier that we are facing. We are now in a world where gas prices are incredibly high and driving is expensive. We are a province of very few people but a lot of veterans. I have always thought—and I've been advocating this—that if a woman is the VAC rehab program and she is allowed to put in a claim for her medical appointments that are a distance away, why can we not authorize VAC case managers to give the same accessibility to informal peer support that benefits them holistically?

Veterans Affairs committee  No, we're only 35 minutes from Halifax.

Veterans Affairs committee  We purposely chose that spot. Unknowingly, we chose that spot because we are frontage on the road. You don't have to drive up a long, dusty, dirt path to find where we are. We have visibility and cleared space, seven acres of uninterrupted space where you won't be afraid that something is going to come around the corner and scare you.

Veterans Affairs committee  No, I'm okay.

Veterans Affairs committee  There has been no research. This has been a labour of love from needing to be productive in society. We deliver food, but it's not just food. We deliver everything a family needs for that month, from bread products to school snacks to toiletries. We add in creative items for the veterans, and every one of the boxes that is delivered is curated for that family.

Veterans Affairs committee  —but it is pervasive. It needs to end. That's my last word on that.

Veterans Affairs committee  Can I just add that the reason it's not easy is that I am not just the person running the Veteran Farm Project? I am a woman who's been sexually assaulted by men in the Canadian Forces, the ones who are supposed to be having your back, your battle buddy. How do you expect someone to come back from that and retrust men, organizations...?

Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you. We are currently being supported through the VAC family well-being fund, which ends next year. We do not have future possibilities of funding because we are a non-profit, not a charity. I currently have stacks of paper of potential grant funding that we could apply for, but we're not a charity.

Veterans Affairs committee  Before I begin with an answer for that, I would like to bring up a few points and answer some of what has been discussed recently. I think something's missing the mark here with the RCMP. They have a human resource department. In the Canadian Armed Forces, we follow the chain of command.

Veterans Affairs committee  I would say it was because I was in a warm, dry space and had meals cooked for me as opposed to being in the ground, dirty, and being rained on. It's not for the culture in the navy, that's for sure, because it is a systemic problem throughout the navy. However, I found joy in what I did as a medic on board.

Veterans Affairs committee  That has a multi-layered answer. To start, when I was retiring, I wasn't ready to retire. I did not want to be out of the forces, but I was being released. I didn't have a choice. In 2018, my spouse and I purchased a farm in a little hamlet in Nova Scotia called Sweets Corner. I don't know why we purchased it, but we did, and I knew it needed to be a space for healing.

Veterans Affairs committee  I can say that when women joined the Canadian Armed Forces in all trades in 1989, I don't think there was forward thinking about what happens once women start retiring en masse once they've served 20 years. We are currently in a 10- to 15-year period in which we've been seeing a large cohort of women entering into their time as veterans.