As I was saying earlier, I have always worked in the area of justice, in the broad sense. I am a lawyer by training. I chose law and I enjoy this area. The person in this position has an opportunity to enforce legal provisions. We have our own bible. This is the first time I am working in a position in which everything is written in black and white; everything that guides our decision-making comes from a single piece of legislation. It may not be the best organized piece of legislation, but we know how Parliament would like us to proceed.
My legal training is the first asset that prepared me for this position. There is also the fact that I practised law for about 10 years, at the beginning of my career. Furthermore, I also managed cases at the Department of Justice. I was responsible for the justice department's activities in the Quebec region. We dealt with thousands of files. When I became deputy minister, we had to resolve issues related to Indian residential schools. We had 16,000 active files dealing with lawsuits. Thus, I have a little experience in organizing work in a legal context and in processing files. I very much enjoy these kinds of things. I was in a similar situation as chair of the Parole Board of Canada: there were 17,000 decisions to make every year. I had to manage this stream of decisions.
As for the third and final aspect, I think I am naturally a very compassionate person. Over the course of my career, I have often worked with underprivileged clients, in particular, former students of residential schools and inmates. According to the documentation and information I have received since becoming interim commissioner, in many cases, the people involved are going through a difficult time and need to be treated with consideration and compassion. We are not dealing with just a file; we are dealing with people's lives, often people who have been made vulnerable. That was also the case with former students of residential schools, at the Parole Board, and in some cases, at the Department of Justice.
Those are three aspects that come to mind.