I've been sitting here listening and I want to say that I'm highly troubled by this. I find it a huge issue and, quite frankly, the conclusions are unacceptable.
At a time in this country when Canadians have never asked so much of their soldiers and have never felt so proud of them and the job they do--all of them, every soldier in uniform, including the two very senior officers here and the deputy--I'm very disturbed that we would end up treating our soldiers in this fashion.
Vice-Admiral, in your opening remarks, you said: “Reservists are...a vital part of our Canadian Forces, significantly contributing to Canada's success in military operations...In fact, at one point at the height of our operations back in February of 2010, 15,000 of our 27,000 primary reserve members were on full-time service.”
A lot of the successes we've been having around the world have been because of reservists, and I have to say to you, sir, I'm very disappointed that throughout this whole thing there hasn't been a single apology from you or the deputy, who arguably are two the most powerful and influential military people. I believe our reservists are owed an apology for being treated in this fashion.
The auditor outlined this. This is pretty scathing as reports go. I've listened to a lot of reports. The Assistant Auditor General said in his opening statement that, “We found that National Defence did not have adequate planning in place”. Well, next to fighting and training, planning is what Defence does. He continued in the text that, “No senior official was made responsible for coordinating both the policy development and the delivery of the Reserve Force Pension Plan”.
My understanding of the military--though most of my time was in the police--is that you set a goal and then you make sure there is somebody responsible. So I would ask the Vice-Admiral, why wasn't somebody assigned? It has been pointed out by the auditor, one of the main reasons for the problems and the backlog was that a senior person wasn't assigned. So why wasn't someone assigned, sir?