In the short term it's a little difficult to determine. It will take us a while. We will have to initiate a new call from membership for this position, which we will probably do within the next month. Hopefully it will attract suitably qualified candidates for this particular position.
In the interim, I am basically doing what I can to take up the slack in this regard, and we will do what we can to ensure that the ramifications are not particularly troublesome ones.
I might also point out that one of the motivations for this recommended amendment to the act is to initiate discussions or to have an opportunity for regular discussions with the minister, simply because when advice of this nature is rejected--and it might happen again, and for a variety of different species special subcommittees--it can be very problematic in terms of COSEWIC's planning and our workload prioritization responsibilities. We have a regular process by which we assess species at greatest risk of extinction in the country, and it would be very useful for COSEWIC to have a better sense of which appointments may or may not be accepted by the minister.