You mentioned our office, and you're right. We are looking at facts, collating facts, meeting people. It took 10 months, 500 people, and 600 documents to write the report. My role is to look at the facts, identify what could be improved, and make recommendations to the minister. They're recommendations to improve the system.
We've been saying there's a shortage of manpower, a shortage of people, but there's no performance measurement system. It has been 10 years, and the CF and DND are spending a lot of money. It's a priority to take care of people, but there's no performance measurement to see how well they're doing. People say we are better than other countries, but I'm not sure. I'm skeptical. I didn't look at that because I'm not sure we're doing that well. There are still things to be done. We want to attract others. Competition is out there, but there are barriers and impediments within DND and the CF. If you go on a more aggressive recruiting campaign, if you are more innovative in your approach, you can resolve issues. I've seen doctors on bases in this country who have initiatives that they put on the ground that help troops and their families, but as you go higher in the chain of command, there's resistance. You need to decentralize the execution sometimes. Even if you keep the policy at the higher level, decentralize the execution so people can find the solution, so they can tap into the society and hire someone.
On one base there were two ladies who were ready to come in, a social worker and a psychologist. They were ready to come in but in Ottawa there was a freeze. Every time you wanted to hire another public servant, you had to go through two committees in Ottawa. It took so long that these ladies found jobs elsewhere. I'm saying we need to address our system internally first.