That's a very good question. My biggest challenges are twofold. One is to continue the history and the legacy built before me by my predecessors, by the folks who had come before me, to provide my clients--the minister, the CF, the department--with operationally relevant and timely legal solutions to their legal issues.
The second and most important aspect is the welfare and care of the folks in my command. As you can draw from my comments, we are a small office, the office of the JAG, and if anybody in this room is familiar with our colleagues to the south, they know that they're an extremely large organization militarily. That includes their individual legal shops, so when we compare ourselves in terms of numbers, we pale in comparison, to use a phrase.
However, I use the phrase often and with accuracy that we're a low-density high-demand asset within the Canadian Forces and the Government of Canada, and we punch well above our weight. My folks, who I've worked with as colleagues and now as their leader, continue to do that on a daily basis, so when we're providing that operationally timely and relevant legal advice, because we do so under very extremely stressful circumstances...
Many of you have just returned from a trip to Afghanistan. We have seven legal advisers deployed to Afghanistan currently, and they're at the right hand of the commander for every decision the commander is making that requires legal advice, and that's not in a comfortable office at 10 o'clock in the morning over a coffee.
Those are extremely demanding circumstances, so when we're providing that advice, whether it's here in Ottawa, which can equally be stressful at times, or across the country, or on deployments, I have to make sure that my people are taken care of and that they're not burned out as well.
Those are my two biggest challenges, Mr. Chair.