Public Accounts committee  I have spoken to Commodore Bernatchez about her resource level, and she believes she is properly resourced. I think there are a number of elements. There is no one answer. I can't give you a simple answer as to why there are delays. Sometimes the victim doesn't want to come for

Public Accounts committee  We agree that the report is problematic in the conduct of the military justice system. It's not the intent or the purpose or the validity of it. It's that the conduct of some cases in the military justice system has been problematic, and it does affect esprit de corps, which is w

Public Accounts committee  Thank you very much for the question. I agree that it is difficult when senior leadership changes. We tend to go from one person's priorities to another. This is ingrained in our governance, in that our assistant deputy minister's information management system reports to us on t

Public Accounts committee  Thank you for the question, Mr. Christopherson. The answer to that is no. There is a new judge advocate general, and she has a new staff. She came into the job in June 2018, and she exercised leadership to change the process before the Auditor General's report came out, but in c

Public Accounts committee  I think there's been a series of problems. The previous JAG retired and he did not put in monitoring and oversight, as required. The department did not ensure that there was monitoring and oversight, as required.

Public Accounts committee  If we want to talk about accountability, there has been a habit in the Department of National Defence, as well as other departments, to not fully implement...or to say that perhaps the department—or the JAG or whomever—agreed with previous recommendations and actually did nothing

Public Accounts committee  It didn't work to the extent it should have. That's the conclusion, and we agree.

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, I did not say that we did not have a very good JAG. I would not like that to be on the record. We have said that Commodore Bernatchez came in as the audit was going on, has started to implement change and has pushed forward with the change recommended by the Auditor G

Public Accounts committee  I'm sorry, Mr. Chair. I don't think that I can answer that to a person. The system is responsible. The system is accountable, and I am accountable as the deputy to ensure that we implement everything that the Auditor General has recommended. I will not name a person.

Public Accounts committee  We are accounting for ourselves in that we are not arguing with the Auditor General. We are not arguing with you. We acknowledge that this was not well done and in six months we will have evidence for you that we have taken this seriously and changes have been made. Changes have

Public Accounts committee  I think we're starting the testing of the system in 2019. We're implementing the system in 2019.

Public Accounts committee  If I may, and I'll ask the commodore to jump in, we're doing a number of things in parallel. We're reviewing the process, implementing the system and extending the posting period of the officers who work for Commodore Bernatchez in the JAG. She's also reviewing training and all t

Public Accounts committee  If I may respond, you're absolutely highlighting a point that we haven't brought out. Obviously for us, the system will help provide information to us, but if the underlying human behaviour doesn't change and we don't prioritize investigations and we don't train commanding offi

Public Accounts committee  Thank you very much for the question. I'll begin. Certainly, the commodore can jump in. It wasn't a priority within the department. Other systems were a priority—operational systems for the forces out fighting, systems for the air force, army, navy, to support them as they were

Public Accounts committee  Right. I don't disagree with a thing you've said. It's not that we can't. It's that we haven't. There isn't a systematic method across all aspects of the judge advocate general's organization to direct things in the same way. When people are doing things manually, they slip and t