Sir, it's taken us very long to get here; this is not our first attempt. We have tried--I say we, but there have been two other bills before the House that did not make it through and died on the order paper. One of the reasons Bill C-41 is structured the way it is is to try to take the essential elements that were felt to be more or less agreeable and get those established so as to avoid another protracted process that might not lead us to some of the changes that we need to put in place.
In terms of the financial compensation, sir, I think the way government is structured, the way departments are structured, the way federal accountabilities are structured, and the way the Department of National Defence, the Chief of the Defence Staff, and the deputy minister are positioned in that organization work very well from a number of perspectives. However, in this particular one, it has become very challenging to connect all of that in a way that would give the chief the ability to make the types of decisions that from a grievance perspective we feel he ought to be able to make and yet accept for the government the financial commitment that this would entail in order to redress the grievance. We have looked at an internal procedural resolution to that and we continue to experiment with it, but because of some of these other issues, that procedural fix is unlikely to satisfy the members of this committee, because it's not satisfying me.
We have looked at the potential for a legislative change, but I believe that the cascading requirements of legislation may make that a rather challenging approach. We've looked at a way of approaching Treasury Board to get authorities for the chief in these specific areas. That work continues, with Treasury Board and internally, to see how we would do that. As I say, I have been surprised at the challenge that we have encountered in dealing with some of the positions inside and outside the department. They were fairly hard when we started this investigation, but I believe they have been adjusted through a process of dialogue, negotiation, and experimentation, to the point that I actually feel that we can probably address this issue through a combination of both regulatory adjustments through the Treasury Board and procedural adjustments to how we approach the question.