Again, our position is clear. When we look at the Canadian Forces grievance system, which is entrenched in the National Defence Act, we feel that there's still unfairness and the system as such is not complete until the final authority, which is the Chief of the Defence Staff, receives full authority to compensate financially.
We do not look into the Financial Administration Act, and we do not look into ex gratia in the sense that it is under Treasury Board, but we know that those particular instruments most of the time deal with the head of the organization, who is the deputy minister. Our report on this particular issue is the Canadian Forces grievance system is mainly under the Canadian Forces and we feel the injustice could be dealt with in the National Defence Act. It already reflects the CF Grievance Board and the Military Police Complaints Commission grievance system, but it does not say that the Chief of the Defence Staff cannot make financial compensation. The minister raised this in one of his letters. Therefore, our position is it should be in the act, which means that the rest is irrelevant.
On the civilian employee, public servant side, if someone has a grievance.... They have no union. This is what the members have. If a civilian employee grieves a decision by the employer and it takes a month for it to get to the final level of grievance, during that time the civilian employee may have been removed from his duties. If the decision is that the decision was wrong, the system will pay the month of salary that the employee lost.
We have examples of military personnel who were removed from their positions, grieved the decisions, came back, and the Chief of the Defence Staff agreed that they should never have been removed. They lost two weeks of salary, and he could not pay them back.
There are two different grievance systems, military and civilian, with all those acts. All I'm saying is that by going to the ex gratia with a direct tie to the conditions imposed by Treasury Board will not give the CDS the final authority to close a grievance under his authority.