Status of Women committee  Yes.

Status of Women committee  Alternative dispute resolution is under the responsibility of the chief of military personnel. That's a decision that he took as part of the reduction of the deficit. I think alternative dispute resolution, from their point of view, is a mandatory service we provide to civil servants, but it's not mandated by law for the military, so they're significantly reducing the size of it.

Status of Women committee  The communications section has some data. My group does not monitor the website. We have data, but they are certainly not specific. We are not able to separate them and determine whether a person visited the site to find out about harassment, compensation or a transfer. We do not have that degree of detail.

Status of Women committee  The figures that I have are from people who call in. I only see the number of people who call the office to ask for information or help. We keep in touch with the people from the Canadian Forces and we have a good relationship with them. We can look at their numbers and see that, in many cases, their numbers are different from ours.

Status of Women committee  It is relatively significant and, as I explained, it is because of fear of reprisal. People call us, ask a lot of questions and, then, they decide not to go ahead with the process because they do not feel capable of going through it for two years. They feel that it would be too difficult, that the harassment would only become worse and that, at any rate, it would practically not make a difference.

Status of Women committee  Certainly.

Status of Women committee  Often, when they call us, we direct them to the National Defence or the Canadian Forces website because the instructions and regulations are posted on the website and they are kept up to date. We try not to post outdated information on our website. We always refer individuals to the site that has updated information.

Status of Women committee  No.

Status of Women committee  The ombudsman’s mandate was established based on a departmental directive. In fact, the Minister of National Defence decided to create the office of the ombudsman and set up its own directive. It was not done through legislation, the way it is for other independent organizations.

Status of Women committee  I'm not sure I understand the question.

Status of Women committee  That would be totally outside of my realm. One of the things we don't do is necessarily look at the discipline piece of the military. Most of the issues the office looks at are the administrative pieces—finance, posting, harassment pieces, all this stuff. As soon as it becomes disciplinary and in court, it's outside of our mandate and outside of our box.

Status of Women committee  It's not part of the mandate.

Status of Women committee  Harassment is, but within the harassment piece, once again, as I've said, we're fairly limited in looking at the process and the procedural fairness of the harassment piece. We cannot review a case and say that our decision would have been different. We cannot say, “Here's what we think at the office of the ombudsman.

Status of Women committee  None at all. Actually, there's a specific clause in our mandate that prevents us from looking at what the Military Police Commission is doing. Anything that is of a criminal nature, we're not looking at it. Everything dealing with discipline or criminality is clearly outside of what the office is looking at.

Status of Women committee  Zero.