I know the chief has said publicly that we are, and I don't mean to imply that we're not. We're looking at universality of service. An example that the surgeon general and I have spoken about—I'm not a doctor—is that there have been massive advances in terms of the stability of medication. Many of our policies date from the days when they had to be in a fridge, but we have medication now that's stable in hot environments, which goes to the idea that you wouldn't have access to medical care. With respect to the idea that we would deploy somewhere in danger where we wouldn't have medical care, our goal is to have people in a hospital so that we can deal with them. That's why we have such a high survival rate out of Afghanistan.
The real issue, then, comes down to how we interpret this to provide flexibility. That's exactly where we are. Right now in the Canadian Armed Forces, a person may be what we call “accommodated” in a position for up to three years after they've been deemed to be in breach of the universality of service principle. Part of what we're looking at there is a policy change. Are our universality of service medical principles too rigid? Remember that what we're focused on is the ability to deploy. The chief has spoken about that.
Needless to say, there are many people in NDHQ who are not current on their gas mask or on firing their C7 on the range. You would have to be able to do that, but many positions don't require you to deploy in those environments. The accommodation process is part of it.
At the core part, from a military perspective, you obviously want your Canadian Armed Forces to be able go to bad places, such as a flood or a fire inside the country. There is room for redoing that, and we're in the process of doing it.