National Defence committee  May I make a comment? The commander or the person who makes the decision, the initial authority, can never be the person against whom the grievance is directed. So if the commander has made a decision and that person complains about it, that person has to go through the commander

National Defence committee  The commander forwards the grievance to the next authority, but remains informed. As a result of the chain of command in the military hierarchy, it is very important that the commander be aware of the fact that the person disagrees with him. That also affords the complainant and

National Defence committee  Yes, they can request an assistant—

National Defence committee  Not legal, no.

National Defence committee  That's because lawyers in the Canadian Forces are military lawyers and they advise the chain of command.

National Defence committee  No, civilian: they may be assisted by a civilian lawyer.

National Defence committee  Not usually.

National Defence committee  They took that away.

National Defence committee  Could I make a comment too? In 2000, the act was adopted and the board was created. In looking at the current act, we just realized that although it's never occurred, it is possible for current members of the CF to be appointed to the Canadian Forces Grievance Board. The Governo

National Defence committee  That's correct. If we want to put these three recommendations in place, we need an amendment to the act.

National Defence committee  I'm sure it can.

National Defence committee  All the board findings are confidential because the names of the complainants cannot be disclosed. However, all the summaries of our recommendations and findings are on-line. You can even do a search by subject. That's also how we can detect subjects that repeat. There's also a l

National Defence committee  The types of grievances we're now getting under this process are promotion grievances and administrative measures. Even though they're not disciplinary measures, the CF are allowed to, for behavioural or performance issues, give a recorded warning and C and P--

National Defence committee  We never used to have counselling and probation. We had them once in a while, but now we're going to get all those--

National Defence committee  There's relief of command, removal--