National Defence Committee on May 1st, 2013

[Corneliu Chisu, Conservative, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

Okay.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you. Your time has expired.

The last question goes to Madame Moore.

[Christine Moore, NDP, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The first question I would like to ask you—

[Derrick Gleed]

The translation device is not working here, and I'm afraid I'm....

I'm very embarrassed to say that I'm unilingual; I'm sorry.

[Christine Moore, NDP, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Bezan will start the clock over to be fair. I know that he is a good chair.

Can you hear me now? Can you hear the interpretation?

[Derrick Gleed]

My 17-year-old daughter would be shaking her head at me right now.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Okay. We have it now.

[Derrick Gleed]

I apologize.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Go ahead, Madame Moore.

[Christine Moore, NDP, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Coincidentally, one of my questions deals with translation.

In the case of many organizations helping injured soldiers, the people involved are anglophone, like the majority of the organization.

You have quite a limited administrative budget. How do you familiarize francophone CF members with your programs? Translating a website and programs is costly, administratively speaking. Few organizations appear to have bilingual administrative capabilities. How do you reach out to francophone service members?

Finally, do you have some general or specific recommendations to make for our report in order to improve care for injured soldiers?

[Derrick Gleed]

I could comment with regard to the web issue.

We actually are bilingual on our website. We weren't previously; we are now. Going forward, that will be improved dramatically.

With regard to the other question....

[Phil Ralph]

By the way, our website I think went live this week in French.

Yes, it was a long process to translate all the documents and to get everything, but we think it's an important thing. When we had discussions with Senator Dallaire on becoming our national patron, it was one of the absolute things he insisted on, which was a good thing.

We are also moving forward structure-wise, because Canada is such a large country. Obviously we're a very small board. We can't get to the whole country all the time, especially those of us who have other employment. That's difficult. But what we're doing now is we're installing provincial representation. Our representative in Quebec is bilingual.

[Derrick Gleed]

General Dallaire's assistant is initially our support in Quebec, but we are very rudimentary at this point. We have a lot of growth to do.

[Phil Ralph]

But we have earmarked that as a growth area for us.

[Derrick Gleed]

I would like to add to that. One of our corporate sponsors, Tough Mudder is having their first event in Montreal with thousands of people participating, all of whom have the opportunity to donate to Wounded Warriors Canada.

So it's very much on our radar.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Okay. Do you have any supplementary questions?

[Christine Moore, NDP, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Well, I had also asked the witnesses if they had recommendations, but none of them answered. I just wanted to give them some time to make recommendations for the report.

[Phil Ralph]

Obviously we're a volunteer board so if somebody out there is fluently bilingual and wants to help us, we welcome help from right across the country. If people want to work with us and think what we're doing is wonderful, they can look on our website and see what we do.

[Derrick Gleed]

If you have someone in your riding who is interested in this subject matter, by all means, we are more than open to their help. We are already supporting programs. We obviously funded the homeless program through Montreal, and we've done other work as well.

Again, our growth in Quebec needs to be bigger than it is, and if you'd like to assist us with some recommendations, please, by all means.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Okay. Thank you.

I want to thank both our witnesses, Mr. Gleed and Padre Ralph, for speaking with us today.

I'm going to excuse you from the table. We have one order of business here to deal with. All of you received a notice of motion from Mr. Harris. He's asking if we can debate that now. To do so requires unanimous consent, so I can waive the normal routine motion, which is 48 hours' notice. Do I have unanimous consent to deal with it?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Mr. Harris, please read your motion into the record.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, colleagues, for unanimous consent. It's a very short notice of motion and I read it as follows:

That the Committee invite the Auditor General of Canada to appear before the committee to discuss his report on Search and Rescue Activities found in Chapter 7 of the Spring 2013 Report of the Auditor General of Canada.

I think is pretty self-explanatory. The report was fairly comprehensive. It is an issue and we would have an interest in many aspects of it. We're not doing a study on search and rescue as such, we would have other studies available, but I think we've always wanted to be able to deal with things as they come forward. This is clearly in the public eye.

The Auditor General has brought it to the attention of Parliament and said it's one of the three most important issues of the 11 chapters in his book. I would urge us to ask the Auditor General to come for one meeting and that we have a two-hour meeting with the Auditor General as soon as that can be fitted into the schedule. I'm not suggesting a date at this point.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Okay, the motion's been moved by Mr. Harris.

Other comments? Mr. McKay.