Defence Team News: Seamless Canada – Healthcare and Childcare
Video / June 16, 2023
Transcript
Col Stephanie Godin: In my directorate, we have the initiative that is Seamless Canada, which aims to look at the stressors on military families, and try to work with provinces and territories to try to remove them as much as possible. So, we're talking about those stressors when we move from one province or territory to another.
Maj Krista Feniak: I've experienced being posted from different provinces... the benefit. An example I have is one province I was posted to with my family. Of course, you don't get a doctor right away... And through the initiative, we got a family doctor in under a year, which was great. On the opposite side of that, especially in my role here at 403, I have noticed that varying in the provinces, you don't always get that advantage.
Col Godin: So, we've had some movement forward with Seamless Canada. For instance, families no longer have to wait the 90-day period to have access to their health card. So, provinces and territories have waived that for families. But what does come up though, is access to family physicians. So, when they move to a new province or territory, they're at the bottom of the list again and they have to wait on those wait lists in order to have access. So, that comes up.
Capt Pawulski: I have two young children. I'm part of a service couple – my spouse is in the Armed Forces as well. And my kids are in daycare, they're daycare aged. And in moving to Valcartier, it was a huge struggle to find childcare. It took my wife… She applied to over 30 different daycares, and we got a positive response from one.
MGen Simon Bernard: The other one is access to childcare. Childcare not just for, you know, normal working hours, normal daycare, and childcare. But we also have, you know, single parents that may get a call and have to deploy, like it happened during the pandemic. So, having access to emergency childcare support. So that's also something we're looking at under Seamless Canada.