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Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Jon Vance has a message for the grieving families, who hope to get closure from military boards of inquiry established to look into the deaths of their loved ones.

It’s not about you, the general says.

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“Boards of inquiry are designed to inform the chief of defence staff and the Armed Forces about what changes need to be made, what went wrong, does anybody need to be held accountable, and so on,” Vance told journalists on Thursday. “And so, they are often seen as a mechanism to help people find closure and I understand that and I’m glad they play a role in that, but that’s not their design.”

The Canadian Forces is once again facing criticism from various families about delays in getting the results of board of inquiries into the deaths of their loved ones who served in the Canadian Forces.

My colleague Lee Berthiaume of the Canadian Press reports on yet another such case with his recent article chronicling how the mothers of three Royal Military College students who died two years ago are trying – unsuccessfully – to get answers from the Canadian Forces. The mothers say they are angry and frustrated that the Department of National Defence/Canadian Forces has not released the results of an internal inquiry into their sons’ deaths.