Mr. Garrison, with all due respect, there were many options available to the ombudsman, and more importantly, as it was, when it was passed on to PCO for the appropriate people to give the appropriate advice, they would have told him. There are many things that could have been done.
I'm not here to speculate. What I can only do is to make sure that any allegation that comes forward is immediately looked at, and that's exactly what we did.
I can assure you, for one thing, that I don't care about the position or the rank of any individual. I care about the people who have been impacted and I want to make sure that they get the just outcome.
That is why, when I was serving, it was my focus, while I was serving in the police, and why, right now, as Minister of National Defence, it has been my number one priority from day one.
When we put people as chapter one of the defence policy, the reason that was done was to focus on this, to tell the entire chain of command, the entire structure, that everything that you do must be focused on them: the change in policy, the resources and how you rout out this behaviour.
Here's the thing, though. I know how much you care and I've seen the passion you have, but you also know my passion as well. We want to improve our processes. We have a lot more work to do and we will get it done.