Human Resources committee  The point I'm trying to make here is that depending on the nature of the issue, the board will do its very best to answer, to come up with a view on what it thinks about a particular issue. The timeframe I gave you is the timeframe the board has taken to deal with it.

Human Resources committee  The way things happen—

Human Resources committee  I'll give a quick answer to the very last question. Based on the list I have in front of me, ignoring issues that are really of an urgent nature, such as the CN strike right now, it takes between three and a half months to two and a half years.

Human Resources committee  No. These are issues where the board has been asked to come up with a decision on a variety of issues. The board obviously has to find all the facts in order to give an opinion. It's not a question of the board not taking it seriously and taking a long time. Sometimes the issues

Human Resources committee  The only thing I would like to add, which I said before, is that the nature of services being provided by the federally regulated sectors would be quite different from that of services provided by provincially regulated businesses. That leads to this issue that even your quote su

Human Resources committee  I think I've already accepted my inability to define both violence and how I would factor that into policy-making.

Human Resources committee  I was trying to be quite clear, but obviously I wasn't. My position is that I am trying to be as helpful as I can to the committee members. In trying to be helpful, I am doing my very best to answer questions with responses of a factual and analytical nature. The policy issue be

Human Resources committee  I'll answer with two very simple questions. One, am I concerned about the existing balance and worried about disturbing it? My answer to that is that it's not my prerogative to worry about that, it's the minister's. On the question of—

Human Resources committee  Yes, there is a balance in the accord, based on the law that was designed by the people at the time who said they were establishing a balance in the accord.

Human Resources committee  Obviously in some circumstances there is violence. As I said, we don't keep statistics on violence because it's hard to define, but that there is some violence is quite obvious. If it exists—and I acknowledged my problem in response to an earlier question on the same issue—it's n

Human Resources committee  The answer to that question simply is that I don't know. It really depends on the nature of the issue. I can see them coming to a decision on an essential service fairly quickly, or I can see them taking a long time because it's not quite clear.

Human Resources committee  When the board is full, there are about seven people on the board.

Human Resources committee  Let me ask my expert to answer that question.

Human Resources committee  My expert tells me that she's not quite clear on what would be or would not be allowed. We really haven't come to those kinds of conclusions on the Bill C-257 provisions.

Human Resources committee  I don't have the answer to that question.