Public Accounts committee  Whose policy is that? The Department of Veterans Affairs?

Public Accounts committee  I would submit to you that I don't think a mission ever ends. It will never end in the history of a nation. If you take a look at it from the point of view of honouring our veterans, we continue to honour them every day. If you look at how we portray that information, we still recognize them.

Public Accounts committee  I would say yes, but you have to know how simple and how challenging it is. As General Jaeger alluded to, much of this, if not all of it, is decentralized.

Public Accounts committee  It is three months, to be specific, and the information will relate to the situation in Afghanistan.

Public Accounts committee  Yes, it will be in both official languages. It will be tabled in both official languages.

Public Accounts committee  We can do that for you.

Public Accounts committee  And to be fair, it's not just a national issue, it's an international issue. Internationally, the number of mental health care providers are in short supply around the world. So we're competing with not only the internal-to-Canada challenge, but also the international challenge.

Public Accounts committee  The Veterans Affairs' team is already on the base, and that is very important for this program.

Public Accounts committee  You don't pay me to be a bureaucrat, right?

Public Accounts committee  Yes.

Public Accounts committee  If I can expand a little bit, something you need to be aware of, as I touched on earlier just as a side piece, is called the transition interview. The critical question is how you connect the soldier, sailor, airmen, and airwomen as they leave the force and do this transition that General Jaeger talks about in an efficient and effective way.

Public Accounts committee  I'll start off and then turn it over to General Jaeger. The first thing I would tell you is that I don't think the province of Ontario—I could be wrong—shares its medical information with other provinces and, more importantly, that there's a medical system and an information system in place to do that.

Public Accounts committee  If I could just clarify, clearly, General Jaeger's not a bureaucrat. General Jaeger's a leader. Take a look at what many of them have to provide: when I was in Afghanistan with my medical company, my medical officer's time was spent providing leadership, and command-and-control coordination.

Public Accounts committee  That's a fair question. That's something we're going to do, and I commit to that. Right now our focus is on getting what we've got right and getting it better. For example, next week, February 5 and 6, we have 450 soldiers, sailors, airmen, airwomen, all different ranks, coming here to Ottawa.

Public Accounts committee  I`d like to first come back to the issue of time. And I think I made the comment, not General Jaeger. I want to clarify something for the committee, because I think it's getting lost in some of the discussion. If you want the data, I'll give you the data, but it's going to take about a week and a half.