Monsieur le président, I will just answer different parts of the question.
First, it comes back to the definition of the words “continuing full-time service”, because if you look at continuing full-time service, I come back to
my explanations regarding people who occupy permanent positions in the reserve force.
That's permanent, full-time positions. One-, two-, three-year contract is not on continuing full-time service. This is what it comes back to. I can tell you this categorically, because I've asked this question.
What goes on now doesn't violate the law. If that's the case, then the law has been broken for the last 30 or 40 years. It comes back to an interpretation of the individual, who at least, I would submit, accepts some of it, and it comes back to one issue, which the individual fails to mention: hiring the person with the best knowledge and the most expertise. It's not mentioned there. What is mentioned is that they're just hiring someone. It comes back to this view that friends are hiring friends and people are hiring people. At the end of the day, that's not what it's about. It's about hiring someone
who basically has the knowledge, who
the skills to be able to do the job on a short-term basis to fill the need.
This is the issue that I would throw out to the committee. Be very careful when you take a look at all the anecdotal evidence, and yes, I understand that once you get enough anecdotes you can call it research. I understand that, but at the end of the day, you have to ask the question: who is the question being posed by? Is it being posed by...
—and this is very important—
somebody in the reserves who has been on a continuing three-year engagement, a three-year contract for the last 20 years? There are many; they exist. Are those the people who are unhappy? I don't know if that's who this individual is. Or is this a person who is on class A? I don't know.
There is a danger if we don't understand where the question comes from, because I have had people come and raise the issue to me: “I've been working in the regular force for 15 years”. “What have you been doing?”, I ask. “Class B, full-time reserve, three-year contract after three-year contract after three-year contract.” Remember, that's one of the reasons we put in the new reserve force pension plan, which reservists who are serving full-time can now pay into.
So if it's coming from that angle, I would only say this in a very open and positive way. There is no guarantee that your three-year contract is going to be renewed year after year. There was a view, except for the last three or four years, when things were going well, when the contracts were always being renewed. That's not the case right now. So there are a number of individuals—I've talked to them—who are unhappy, because their contracts are not being renewed because the numbers are coming down. Or they are saying, the flip side, that other people go into these jobs that are being created.