As I said, when I was asked if I wanted to stand for the position at that time, I indicated that there were two or three things that needed to be done—from a distance, because I had been the executive director of that institution eight years prior, before being the chair. One of them was the fact that we have difficulty sometimes with our credibility surrounding the appointment process and the quality of the decision-makers. In terms of the Canadian perception and the people appearing in front of you, you cannot have a situation where people have doubts as to the abilities of the people rendering decisions.
So I indicated that we should look very closely at revamping the selection process. I'm very careful here—the selection process, not the appointment. The appointment belongs to the government, and it was never on the table. The question is the selection. How do you select, very objectively, based on criteria and on competencies?
As I said in the introductory remarks, we built a regime that we thought could answer to that. I will go back in terms of the commission. There are two things the commission had a history for. One was the question of the competency of the board and the capacity of members to undertake a very difficult task, a very important task, where the decision on the life and death of the individuals in front of you is important. So we established what are the competencies that are required to do the job, and are we recruiting to the right competencies.
If I'm too long, please let me know.
So we established and validated with members nine competencies, and we then started to establish the norm versus how we would measure those tools.
The second thing that was necessary was to try to make sure that at the staffing selection process, for the credibility of the board—because it was an administrative tribunal, with independent decision-makers—there would be no politicizing of the selection process. It was important that the people met the competencies, that we attracted the best and that we brought the best talent to the institution.
That's how it started at that time, and to me, it proved very worthwhile.