Thanks to all of you for joining us today.
I'll address my questions to Mr. Wouters and then to the Auditor General, Ms. Fraser.
I was, at one point in my life, the principal of a small Canadian start-up. We had 12 employees, but as we grew, we doubled that. We were still pretty small, and we were pretty good at creating and manufacturing a product and then getting it out to market and marketing it. But there were a lot of things we weren't good at. We didn't have legal expertise; we didn't have HR or IT expertise. I thought, wouldn't it be terrific if there were a pool of specialized talent and expertise? So my questions are going to be around shared services.
I notice that the Office of the Auditor General recommended that you address the issues of shared administrative services in small entities. I was one and I recognize that there's a need for this. Would you agree, as well, that the needs of small entities are vastly different from those of the larger organizations, and that they can't often attract or afford specialized talent or expertise like the kind I described with HR, IT, finance, legal, contracting, etc.? Is it your intention to develop a shared administrative services strategy? If so, when? How will that strategy address the concerns of small entities in regard to sharing their administrative services?
Is there a plan? When do you plan to put it in place? Let's start there.