Public Accounts committee  In the past, when the administrative aspect fell under another assistant deputy minister, there were two systems and two websites. We will combine them to have a single website, so that reservists have one place to access all of the required information.

Public Accounts committee  In terms of processing times, I'll just correct one thing. When we started this endeavour, the processing times for the files were in the order of 150 hours per file. That is just a further indication of the complexity associated with going through manual records. Due to the ef

Public Accounts committee  Are you asking me whether we will be able to eliminate the backlog in question?

Public Accounts committee  Right now, we have a backlog of around 12,000 applications. Again, it is instructive to have a look at how that 12,000 number is broken down. Fully 83% of those applications refer to people who are still in service today and not yet in a position to receive a pension. That does

Public Accounts committee  As Chief Military Personnel, it falls on me to manage this, in terms of both policy and administration. That was not the case before, but since the summer of 2011, I am responsible for both aspects of the program.

Public Accounts committee  That is correct.

Public Accounts committee  Could you repeat your question?

National Defence committee  Mr. Chair, I'll give you a two-pronged answer. First of all, for those people who are releasing and who want to stay associated with Defence, there is really a civilian tangent to the answer and a military tangent. On the civilian side, I refer to the priority hiring that's avai

National Defence committee  Part of this road to mental readiness is an appreciation that's given to members of the physiological reactions to stress—how to mitigate it with self-talk, visualization, and breathing techniques. My francophone colleagues often invite me to respirer par le nez. Well, that's

National Defence committee  I work closely with my colleague, the senior assistant deputy minister at Veterans Affairs. Once they release from the forces, we lose tracking capability on people. Veterans Affairs is very attuned to this issue. They have had a series of pilot programs in Montreal and Calgary

National Defence committee  Anybody who is going to be released medically goes through a very rigorous administrative review process, starting with the medical community, once that person becomes stabilized. That's an important piece to understand here. No decision is taken until the individual's medical co

National Defence committee  That's a legal question that I'll have to take on notice.

National Defence committee  But we also have, in fairness, in the determination of an individual's ability to meet universality of service from certainly a physical fitness perspective, a threshold test. We all have to do that once a year to confirm our ability to be employable and deployable. If an individ

National Defence committee  First, medically releasing personnel do have a priority referral status within the public service. Second, the joint personnel support units—we have a colonel with us today who is in charge of all the joint personnel support units across the country—run something called TAP, th

National Defence committee  No, no, there's a formal grievance process. They're allowed to make representation. There is an initial and a final level of—