Public Accounts committee  Yes, we are doing that. The minister has driven us very hard to do that. He's been one of the strong advocates for our need to get very focused and targeted in our recruitment if we're going to be successful. In those communities we have to find leaders and spokespersons and cham

Public Accounts committee  Yes.

Public Accounts committee  I don't mean to imply that the problems we have in recruiting are solely due to the cuts that were made. As the Auditor General's report shows, it has always been a challenging area. The selection of recruiting offices that we offered up to cut during deficit reduction, I think,

Public Accounts committee  That would be my error. If I conveyed that, that was not my intent.

Public Accounts committee  I think as I indicated before, to meet our deficit targets, we closed recruitment centres. That was a bad idea, because you cut off a lot of the capacity you need to bring people in. We're rebuilding that capacity, hiring more staff, as the general has mentioned. I think that's

Public Accounts committee  Yes, we have the resources necessary, and we now have new leadership to this file. We have a good game plan to do that, with a lot of work ahead of us. However, I don't believe it's a question of resources. We have technology. We have resources. We have tools. We have to get on

Public Accounts committee  Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just want to add one point. In some of the occupations where we're struggling to recruit, there's a lot of that in Canada. If you live in rural ridings, you know how hard it is to get doctors, nurses, psychiatrists, dental technicians. Our forces f

Public Accounts committee  I think the audit reports do show some systemic problems in recruitment. It's a challenge. It has been a challenge and it continues to be a challenge. There are some events that took place between this audit and the last one. In particular, we went through two major deficit reduc

Public Accounts committee  There are some reasons for that. One is our capacity to recruit. Some of it, too, is that, in some of the most difficult occupations, you are competing for a very scarce resource, and I think in my remarks I talked about that—doctors, psychiatrists, and so on—and I think they can

Public Accounts committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair, for having me back to speak to you and the members of the committee on the Auditor General's report number 5, pertaining to National Defence. You will notice some new faces today. I would like to introduce Lieutenant-General Lamarre, who has just assumed h

Public Accounts committee  Yes, sir.

Public Accounts committee  That's right.

Public Accounts committee  The Treasury Board policies on costing have evolved, even last year, and actually they match exactly where we've gone and are heading and have invested this year. The 2014 plan did not include life-cycle costs for all of our equipment. Some of that costing didn't include sustainm

Public Accounts committee  I think the big challenge for a lot of us on performance indicators is the data to support them. It's pretty easy to come up with great indicators. It's often very difficult to then find an inexpensive, efficient way to collect that data. The government has now given us a prett

Public Accounts committee  I think that's a perfectly reasonable approach to take, and I would agree totally with it, both as a taxpayer and also as the deputy minister of the department. If I'm wasting money in one area, that means I have less money to spend on equipment or readiness or training for the a