I want to walk through this in terms of what happened. I want to be comfortable that if this were to happen again, things would be handled differently.
Taking a look at the order of things, we have Ms. Revine fulfilling her responsibilities. She is charged with this A-base review, and in the course of her work she finds a problem. She takes it to her direct supervisor, Chief Superintendent Macaulay. He advises the ethics commissioner. It seems that these are reasonable things to do. The staff relations representative, Staff Sergeant Lewis, gets involved and informs the commissioner that there's a problem. It seems that internally they're doing all of the things they should have done.
Nothing happens, so finally they go to what they see as their last resort. In February 2004, Staff Sergeant Lewis actually writes a letter to the President of the Treasury Board, the minister responsible for the RCMP—at the time, it would have been Anne McLellan—and the Auditor General with respect to the pension plan matters. In the letter he states that Commissioner Zaccardelli had failed “to meet his obligations under the RCMP Act and as our leader, in relation to serious accusations of wrongdoing by senior managers...”. He has basically gone everywhere he can go and done everything internal that he can do—they all have—and nothing happens. They finally go to the minister. It seems that the minister is as high as it gets, the absolute last resort.
I know there are other mechanisms in place now, but going back, what more could they have done? If you were the commissioner at the time, what would you expect the minister to do in that situation?