Thank you for the question. It's a great question.
In fact, you're referring to a couple of different studies. In 2010 there was the Leigh Fisher report, a third party report that in essence looked at the requirements for military housing from a certain perspective. The perspective specifically was what do we need to support the lowest-earning members of the Canadian Armed Forces—the privates, corporals, officer cadets, and second lieutenants? The assessment looked at that demographic and then spread that across Canada, across all the wings and bases. The figure that was determined that would be appropriate was just over 5,000 units.
When that figure was presented to the commanders of the army, navy, and air force, they reflected upon it and determined that it did not meet the operational requirements, which was not one of the underlying foundations of that initial study.
The approach we're taking right now, with the study that commenced last fall, is to look at a number of different factors. First off, we're taking a scientific approach. We have our defence scientists working on this, based on a number of agreed-upon principles. A foundation has been agreed upon by the army, navy, and air force on how to move forward with this. It includes such key foundational principles as operational readiness, succession planning, obligations to our foreign military who are actually working in Canada, and support to our ill and injured members who do require military housing. It will take some time to do this effectively and to do this with an evidence-based approach. That's why it's taken this period of time.