At the sessions we had with Colonel Darch, the director of mental health, and Colonel Jetly, senior psychiatrist and mental health adviser, Dr. Jetly was unequivocal that he doesn't need to know that, and that he manages by wait time and makes adjustments accordingly as he sees the wait times going up and down. In relation to that, we went across the country from base to base, and we met with all of the base surgeons. They told us that they were measuring by third next available wait time, and that they would report to the surgeon general based on that.
What we discovered along the way was that mental health was being measured by first available wait time. Primary care had told us they don't measure by first available wait time because it gives a false positive. There could be a cancellation the next day. It's not something you could stand on consistently as a guaranteed measure of where you are in the system, so they were measuring by third available wait time because that was the most consistent counted-on time in the system.
We raised this with Dr. Jetly when we came back. We noted the dichotomy between the two approaches. He agreed that it was likely a false positive, and that they would be changing it to third available wait time. To the best of our understanding, in May 2012, when they had their team lead meeting in Ottawa, they were moving to that. From there on in, they were going to discuss with their team leads what they were going to measure.