National Defence committee  I don't know the answer to that question and I don't want to speculate as to how that would have been briefed in the course of the mandate. I think the commitment to those principles and to that reform is real. I'm just not in a position where I can tell you what that looked like operationally in terms of who was briefed when and how progress was being assessed over time.

National Defence committee  I want to focus a little on my evidence because I want to be careful in comparing and contrasting. At all times, I understood the file to be open. I thought Mr. Wernick's evidence to this committee was actually that, as well—that the file remained open in the hopes that either consent would be forthcoming and there would be information from the complainant, or that other information could come forward that might permit some type of review or investigation, even in the absence of information from the complainant.

National Defence committee  I would expect that.... I was not involved in any other cases.

National Defence committee  In a situation in which the person in question is a Governor in Council appointee, I have no doubt that the right place for that to go is the Privy Council Office and, almost certainly, senior personnel at the Privy Council Office.

National Defence committee  I'm here to talk about the issue that's in front of the committee, which relates to a Governor in Council appointee, so I'm going to limit my comments to that. I think that's appropriate. There is no doubt that where you have a Governor in Council appointee, it certainly doesn't live on the political staff side to say, “Let's go round up an investigation and look into this.”

National Defence committee  I share the frustration of survivors and of the public with the scope of the problem in the Canadian Armed Forces, which it seems we learn more about every day. What I reflect in thinking about that is that it is very important that this committee take its responsibility seriously to now present in the best way possible, in a way that is informed by experts, by survivors and by international experience, and provide us with at least some guideposts for the way forward.

National Defence committee  No. I tried to be clear in my answers on that point. I'm not in opposition to providing you with names. I'm here now. You can ask me. I don't have any other names. If there are other people involved, they are not people I'm aware of.

National Defence committee  My understanding was that there was a hope that some information—even if incomplete, even if anonymized, even if purely contextual—would be provided that would then maybe be enough to enable some further step to be taken. To the best of my knowledge, that information was not provided, and I don't believe anonymized information was provided.

National Defence committee  From our point of view in the Prime Minister's Office, the next step was not in our hands. I would defer ultimately to the view that was formed by those individuals in the Privy Council Office who were managing the file. My understanding is that no additional information was provided.

National Defence committee  I don't believe I was ever involved in another file that involved a Governor in Council appointee, but I think where you would go—your first port of call, in a situation like that—would of course be the Privy Council Office. As I indicated before, that team, especially the senior personnel team, but I think the institution more generally, are the experts on issues of tenure, of performance and of conduct in relation to Governor in Council appointees.

National Defence committee  I didn't have any involvement in any discussions or briefing notes or anything around the issue of the general's tenure. That was not something I had participated in or have any knowledge about that I'm able to share with you today.

National Defence committee  I was not aware of it as an issue either at this time or—

National Defence committee  I frankly don't know the answer to that question. There's a whole system for briefing notes. It's not an informal, ad hoc system. There's a system that brings those notes up, and they are allocated. Because I wasn't involved, I can't say.

National Defence committee  My involvement here was to deal with a situation in which the Minister of Defence and his staff had been made aware, without any details, that there was a complaint, and to take every possible, reasonable step to make sure that that complaint got to the right place. For the reasons I've mentioned, the right place is the Privy Council.

National Defence committee  The complaint, as I've indicated several times, is one we assumed could be very serious, and that is why we acted the way we acted. If I had known it was really serious, I wouldn't have done anything in addition to what I did. We were treating it as very serious. Ultimately, no information was brought out about the nature of that complaint that permitted any kind of process.