National Defence committee  —and in this instance, he was faced with such an unusual circumstance, and his first step was to seek advice.

National Defence committee  I don't believe.... Some of those were your words and not mine. That said, what the Prime Minister and I did talk about, when we first learned in March 2021 what the complaint was that was brought to the ombudsperson in 2018, was that it added to what.... It's going to inform ou

National Defence committee  I would correct one bit, which is that there was, I believe —in terms of your suggestion that the recommendations of the Deschamps report weren't followed—some work flowing from the Deschamps report. There absolutely was. Having said that, not all of it was done, and I think we

National Defence committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. I can speak to some of the conversations outside of cabinet that I was privy to in preparation for the announcement, and some of the steps that have been taken in recent weeks. I can't yet speak to the value, because that's in the future, but I really ho

National Defence committee  I will absolutely and directly address your question, but I want to start with your skepticism about it being a systemic problem. I think you've touched on exactly the right thing in your lead-up to that comment, in that this is complicated. There was clearly not somewhere that

National Defence committee  The performance management program is quite expansive and consults quite a number of people. It's a program that's in place for all senior officials across the public service, including deputy ministers and associates.

National Defence committee  Madam Chair, through you, I would just remind us of what we knew, which was we didn't know anything about the allegation at the time or the complaint at the time—

National Defence committee  I'll say two things. It's important to remember that there wasn't an allegation in terms of any content around an allegation to speak of. There was a complaint that the ombudsperson raised with Minister Sajjan that he was not able to do anything with, that we were not able to do

National Defence committee  The answer is that there wasn't an allegation in terms of something for which there was.... We didn't know the nature of the allegation or the contents, the details—

National Defence committee  Madam Chair, through you to the member, I would just again say we didn't have any information about the allegation. We didn't know anything about it. It was something on which all the appropriate follow-up is done through the appropriate people, and the appropriate people to do t

National Defence committee  I think that's right. The staff who work closely with me know that there was one breakfast meeting I would never miss. It wasn't really a meeting; it was a breakfast. It was a working breakfast with some of the members of the armed forces known as the Awesome Women with Rank. The

National Defence committee  To be clear, Madam Chair—

National Defence committee  I just want to remind you what we did and didn't know at that time.

National Defence committee  I want to remind you about what we did and didn't know at the time, which is that we didn't know anything about this complaint. We didn't know the substance, the nature or the details of the complaint.

National Defence committee  I want to remind you that while I took the information extremely seriously, the minister, through his office, brought it to my office. We then passed it to the Privy Council Office, which took carriage of it. We actually didn't know the seriousness or the nature of the complaint—