I'd like to give a little context if I could, Mr. Chair. We stood these things up very quickly, the Canadian Forces and VAC. We started off by putting a couple of employees on a base. Today, as we sit here, I have over 100 employees who actually go to work in an integrated personnel support centre somewhere in this country.
We didn't wait for the 100% solution. We didn't wait to debate it for years. We saw there was a growing need, particularly with veterans coming back from Afghanistan. This was one of the classic things for which we said, “Let's go with the 80% solution. Let's get it stood up. Let's get people on the bases and wings to help the men and women; then, as we go along, we'll work out some of the details.”
As Admiral Smith has noted, there have been various operational directives, but we didn't sit around for a couple of years to figure out what we were going to do. At the steering committee we identified a need, and both the Canadian Forces chair and the VAC chair agreed that we would put resources into this and work together to make it work. I think, as the Auditor General has noted—and certainly it's confirmed in feedback I've received from veterans and veterans groups—there was a need that needed to be filled at that very point in time and continues to be needed today.