I'll do my best. Governance is one of my favourite subjects, so the chance of my running off at the mouth and going off on tangents is fairly high.
The spectrum of care committee is one that has authority over certain aspects of governance. It decides what things will be provided to members of the Canadian Forces at public expense and how much of those things will be provided.
In the past, basically I was given a pot of money and told, “Sort yourself out, and if you have to make trade-offs to make things affordable, just don't make any headlines while you're doing anything.” That was sort of the governance.
We wrote the spectrum of care to get it codified, so that it wasn't arbitrary and people knew what they could expect. Then we actually put in place the committee that would make the decisions about this.
We struggled for a while to get the right level of representation on that committee. You have to understand that the Canadian Forces is not a board of governance culture; it's a chain of command culture. I have a boss, and for most members of the Canadian Forces, as long as they do what their boss tells them to, then what's the problem? The problem is that this is the health care system for the members of the Canadian Forces; it is not just the operation of the Canadian Forces health services group.
So now we have managed to achieve—with the spectrum of care committee, at least—representation at the L1 minus level. So the seconds-in-command, essentially, of the army, navy, and air force sit at the spectrum of care committee, as does my deputy surgeon general as the professional advisor.
The things that get considered by the committee should be brought up from the environments or from the force employers. They get debated. My staff researches what it is likely to cost, how many people are going to need to avail themselves of this service, and is there an evidentiary basis for including this service. The committee comes up with a recommendation, and that is taken forward to the Armed Forces Council.
I know there's a hot debate now about laser eye surgery. I don't know how that one is going to come out. It's not a medically necessary thing to do, but it's something the operators believe vehemently improves operational effectiveness. So they seem to be willing to invest at least some money in laser eye surgery.