Yes, but to be honest, there is a difference here. The director of Defence Counsel Services has the power to hire counsel as needed, which in fact our office did on several occasions. For nearly four years, if not up until the fifth year, we tried to get across the idea that there was no maximum number involved when it came to hiring a lawyer on a general contract. But yet, Treasury Board regulations imposed a limit on expenditures for that purpose. It took us five years to get a legal opinion.
If you look at the JAG's annual report, you will see that a section is devoted to the Director of Defence Counsel Services. We made our needs known. A more recent study on resource allocation concluded that the rank of director of defence counsel services should be equivalent to that of director of military prosecutions and that more counsel should be assigned to the DDCS's office.
There is also another difference in terms of perception. I'm not saying that there should be more counsel, but that seems to be the direction in which DDCS is heading. Also, prosecution counsel are deployed from time to time on different missions. I object in principle to defence counsel being deployed, but occasionally, when some of them specifically ask to be deployed, then we make arrangements for that. When members are deployed, we need to increase our staff levels. However, a general imbalance does exist nevertheless.