Mr. Chairman, I was afraid, in a way, that this question would be asked, but there it is. It has been asked.
It's very difficult. When you think about it all, this person would start from scratch. There would be nothing. So first of all you have to decide what kind of organizational chart you're going to have. Do you have one DG for operations and one for something else? You have to think about this and presumably you have to consult maybe with offices like ours and provincial ombudsmen and ask to be given a sense. This takes time.
Once you've done that, we are part of the Public Service of Canada, and we have to have those jobs classified. The classification process takes some time. I don't want to bury you in bureaucratese, but I just want to emphasize the fact that it takes time.
And then you have to do the recruiting, and speaking from experience, recently we have been trying to hire good, solid investigators who have the right background and the right approach to things, and these are not easy to recruit. You have to launch a process and you get applications in. It takes time.
But the one word of caution, as I think I said earlier, that I would really leave with this committee and with the decision-makers is that the word should be given to the ombudsman that they should move quickly but also that they should get it right. Imagine if, let's say, they are up and running after six months or four months or two months and they realize that they don't have the right structure and that their people have not been trained.
That's the other thing. The veterans affairs world is a very complex world. You have the new charter that just came in. You have all kinds of programs and legislation. The people who answer the phone must be familiar with what they are talking about, so you have to train them in addition to having selected them. That takes a bit of time.
My advice would be the Latin maxim, festina lente, hurry up slowly. Well, the word to the ombudsman should be to do exactly that--festina lente. Get going, but get it right and don't waste time.
And I'm sorry that I cannot be more helpful in terms of giving you precise data, but that's the best I think I can do.