The charter is a living document, and one of the greatest things about it is that it gives the minister so much more power. It is not a charter that's in the hands of the technocrats within the department; it's in the interpretation and the philosophy of the minister. That has to be the cat's meow of it. He or she can move the processes, adjust them rapidly, and get on with things. Over the last year or so we have watched the department work on the implementation. They're into whole new areas in assisting people finding work, retraining. They're with a whole new generation of veterans and so on.
There are growing pains. I think the first thing I would say is that, again, the scale is not recognized. Those who are trying to implement it are overwhelmed. They are overwhelmed. You see what the Americans were talking about with the impact of Iraq; well, divide it by ten and that's here. It is still a hidden statistic. When you go out there and talk with them--and I had the opportunity last week at a big conference in Montreal--they're overwhelmed by the volume. There has to be an immediate attempt at escalating the capability.
The second dimension is on the family side. The family side is still in this provincial-federal fight. I think there is room--at least when I was an ADM we were trying to move on it--for an arrangement that could be worked out with the provinces. As an example, we were talking with the provincial staff in Quebec and they were saying they could barely meet 25% to 30% of the general population's needs for psychiatric and psychological support, let alone an increase that we would impose. However, because we are deliberately putting people and their families into trauma arenas, we have a deliberate responsibility to meet it, and that criteria is different from the general population.
It's breaking that log-jam: one, on volume, and the other on implementing the family side.