We support them all, more specifically those directly concerning the board.
Recommendation 85, which would enable members to complete their caseloads if their terms are not renewed, is outstanding. A number of other administrative tribunals have a similar clause or provision.
One of the board's obligations is to act quickly. As you'll understand, as each of the board members handling a specific case is independent, if a case had to be reassigned to someone else, the review of that case would start over, or the newly assigned member would have to start that review over from scratch. That would therefore compromise the quick handling of the case, and that would consequently increase the time it took to render a decision. So we believe this is very important.
As for Recommendation 86, which concerns the annual report, once again, we are living in an era of convergence and process integration. Federal organizations increasingly have to integrate their business plans and human resource plans. Most of those plans are aligned with the fiscal year. By law, the board reports on the basis of the calendar year, as a result of which you have to read two of the board's annual reports in order to get an overall and integrated idea. We think this is a natural alignment that changes no aspect of the board's mandate, but that would promote clarity and give all those who are interested in what the board does an immediate and unidirectional idea of the board's business.
As for Recommendation 87, which concerns the subpoena power, the act, as I mentioned, provides for a duty to act quickly and a duty of non-formality. That means that the committee has a certain power. I understand that, by law, National Defence must provide us with all the information it controls where a grievance has been filed. We're not talking about that here; instead we're talking about the issue of information where the Canadian Forces do not control the information.
The board actually has two powers, the first being the power to request. Where a request is denied, it has no other power but to go directly to a hearing. Not only does that compromise the speed with which a case is handled, because it is much more complicated to hold a hearing than to subpoena someone to file a document, but also, on the scale of available measures, we only have two choices; we request or we go to a hearing.
I want to point out that, on three or four occasions this past year, we have virtually had to hold a hearing to obtain information that was not necessarily controlled by the Canadian Forces but that the board needed.
The board perceives this as an intermediate tool on a graduated scale of its powers to facilitate its work and cases.
These three recommendations change nothing in its mandate.
I hope I answered the question, Mr. Chairman.