Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you. I am much more comfortable in English.

Veterans Affairs committee  I will answer in English, if I may, madam.

Veterans Affairs committee  It's a deal. This issue is often raised in connection with tribunals. There's no guarantee that any selection process will be perfect. But in my experience with federal tribunals, political interference is a non-starter. Certainly, that was the case in my own tribunal when I was at the CITT, and I think it's more common than that.

Veterans Affairs committee  I'm sorry, I missed the first part of your question.

Veterans Affairs committee  For VRAB or the department, we have not. This is the first contact on this issue.

Veterans Affairs committee  You recognize that I will respond in a general way about tribunals generally.

Veterans Affairs committee  The point of my comment was that extraneous information, information obtained by means other than seeking the evidence for a particular case, is inappropriate. To get to the point of the benefit of the doubt, I think the expectation of exactness is not as great with a tribunal as it is with a civil or criminal court.

Veterans Affairs committee  There are principles, such as the ones that are attached to your package. There are many sources of general principles. They support but do not guarantee consistency of decisions. There are two elements to that, I would say. There are two ways of approaching it. One of them is ongoing training within a tribunal that has national scope.

Veterans Affairs committee  That is very pertinent to the whole question of tribunals all over the place. The idea is to deliver justice in a way that is more accessible than the courts. The timelines are not as long. The decisions are made by people familiar with the territory in which the complaint comes forward.

Veterans Affairs committee  I could go on for an hour.

Veterans Affairs committee  One point is, when you have experts in the field, it has to be dealt with in a very delicate way because the specific expertise and opinions have to be left at the door. Someone’s being an expert in a given area may mean that their natural reaction to certain evidence is to reject it because they know better.

Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I believe I was called here on somewhat different grounds from what most other witnesses would present because I don't come with particular knowledge of VRAB. I would like to make some general remarks about tribunals, what we can expect of them, and then perhaps the questions could enlarge on some particular applications.