I am sure that I heard a comment that we should or could have predicted it three years ago. That, I think, if I heard it correctly, would have surprised many people, up to and including Hillary Clinton.
I want to thank the departmental representatives for being here today. I have a concern, as has our government, for things that matter most to ordinary Canadians. I think of all the things that I have heard your department is doing, the issue of meteorological services—severe weather warnings—matters most to ordinary Canadians. We have to be able to plan our lives around the weather, so the accuracy of those weather warnings is very important.
I want to compliment the department on what I saw in the environmental commissioner's report in this area. I saw many reports of good things.
I want to also say that I strongly disagree with at least one conclusion of the environment commissioner, at paragraph 2.82 in his report, which indicated that “Environment Canada's systems...do not adequately support the delivery of timely and accurate severe weather warnings to Canadians”. In fact, everything I saw in the commissioner's report leads me to exactly the opposite conclusion: that Environment Canada's systems are providing and supporting timely and accurate severe weather warnings. Out of 15,000 severe weather warnings, the environmental commissioner didn't feel there was a single instance of an inaccurate or untimely weather warning to put in his report. I think that speaks very well of the department and that Canadians can have a great deal of confidence in the systems you are proposing.
I notice there's about $3 million of capital expenditure in supplementary estimates (B) directed toward the meteorological service. I notice as well in the environment commissioner's report that over the last three years there have been any number of great developments: the ISO 9001 certification, the Treasury Board 2007 approach to capital planning, the adoption of the NinJo Workstation, the establishment of four national service offices, the creation of the national inquiry response team, new technologies with wireless and RSS, the implementation of the quality management system—all these very great things done in the department.
What I'd like to ask is, which of these great initiatives you've been working on over the last three years do you consider to be the most important that you expect to finalize in the upcoming year? Thank you.