Other drawbacks, Mr. Chairman? I wouldn't want to minimize the points I made about efficiency and timeliness, because for me that's very important. You say that there are, perhaps, mechanisms to address this, and that may be right. There's no doubt that things could be done. I am speaking, as I said, on the basis of pragmatic considerations and based on my own experience, which admittedly, of course, is a limited amount of experience.
Also, in answer to a previous question, I made the point that having an agent of Parliament, having somebody who has a mandate that is broad, reporting to Parliament, makes a good deal of sense because of the breadth, if you will, of the mandate. When you deal with a mandate that's narrow, I think it's preferable to go to the person who ultimately has the ability to direct his department or the CF to do things. The minister under the National Defence Act has, I think, management and direction of the department and the CF, so he is in charge. Of course, as I mentioned also, he's accountable to Parliament through question period or committee work or whatever, so I think it's not only pragmatic in a way, but in theory I think it makes for a better model.
For example, if other ombudsmen-like offices were to be created in the federal bureaucracy, then the risk would be that you would have a multiplicity of those reporting to Parliament, even though they had narrow mandates. I'm not sure that in terms of good governance that would be the right approach. Of course the committee could see fit to having experts advise them in terms of what the theory and the principles would be, and that's not an area I'm highly qualified in.