Mr. Chairman, first of all, we will provide the information to the Committee.
We'll give you all of the details posed here, including the number of regular force people who have gone on to become civil servants. The first question posed was perhaps across government, and that's the other thing we will look at and get you data about.
If I could expand on the one point and make sure that we talk about establishment, this piece is now outside my experience, because the establishment of the Canadian Forces is....
It is the Vice-Chief of the Defence Staff who is responsible for modifying the Canadian Forces establishment.
It is the vice-chief who actually owns and manages the establishment, not me. I think I can provide you with an answer, but it's worth posing the question to him.
First, you cannot take, from my understanding and knowledge, a regular forces position and turn it into a class B position. The regular forces established position always stays regular forces established. What you can do, as in this case, is establish a class B reserve job and then have the individual come and occupy the same job. C'est possible, it's possible to do exactly what was described, but the details are not.... That is the way we've done it. You can't change a regular forces position to a class B position. You can create a class B job tomorrow morning. If I wanted to, I could wake up tomorrow and say that I think I need this position, this position, and this position, if I have the money, as I've stated. I can send out, in an open, transparent process, three established positions for short-term, three-year contracts. That's all within the policy.
In short, can this happen? Yes, it can. But at the end of it all, as I said—I don't know this specific case—who is actually doing the hiring? I can tell you my perspective. Within my command, I had 70 positions last year that were class B. The names of those individuals are now openly on the web. I can't speak to that case. But to be fair, could that happen? Yes, it could.