Colleagues, I don't think we want to prolong this discussion to great lengths, but I just want to make the point that we should consider how the Auditor General's office works. We know she has limited resources to apply to each department, and she works through those at a sort of systemic level, and when there's a crisis, she can respond to that. But considering that she just reported in this area as recently as 2007, just a few months ago, that the study that the CRS was doing already is about 40% complete and will be coming up shortly....
We know there's a shortage of medical personnel, and that DND is competing for medical personnel across the country. In Edmonton, where, let's say, the province is doing very well, and there are more resources, and they have access to more resources than do some of the remote areas, in some of the other provinces, it's just not the case. So we've pretty well identified the problem.
I suspect that we can go ahead, and if the committee ends up passing this motion.... I don't think it actually makes sense right now, because we can probably put it as a recommendation. It's probably not going to change much anyway. So I just think that she's already done it, and probably we can put the motion through. I doubt she's going to have the resources or the time on her priority list to address it right now anyway, but if it makes members feel better to make that motion, I guess we'll take the vote on it.
We certainly have recognized the need. We're probably going to put it in our own report. There are already other investigations going on. I'd suggest maybe we should just make sure we've made a recommendation in our report and go that way.
