Industry committee  Mr. Chair and committee members, good afternoon. As vice-president of finance and corporate services at the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, I'm here to talk to you about ACOA's strategic efforts to help build a competitive economy in Atlantic Canada. I am joined today by ACOA's director general of enterprise development, Janice Nishikawa.

Finance committee  Each individual evaluation report is made public and is posted on our agency website.

Finance committee  Thank you. I'll start by going back to the origin of why the requirement was put in place. When ACOA was first created, it was time-limited for five years. At that time there was a need to report on activities and results to Canadians every five years, and report to Parliament.

Finance committee  It's just that when we were created, we were created for five years, basically. So it's really important for the government to have mechanisms for us to come back and report on our activity on a five-year cycle to justify our ongoing existence.

Finance committee  Yes. On an annual basis, through our departmental performance report, we do report on our performance on a macro level. As I said, on a four-year cycle we evaluate all of our G and C programs to see the impact we're having with those programs.

Industry committee  I would like to respond to a question that I wasn't able to respond to earlier. The ECBC board is a seven-member board, including the chair of the board and the CEO.

Industry committee  Per meeting.

Industry committee  It's a three-year term.

Industry committee  Yes, they did, as per Treasury Board guidelines. I believe it would be in the range of $275 to $350.

Industry committee  We're talking about the ACOA advisory board. It's an advisory board and they did not get involved in ACOA decisions. They provided advice on policies and programs of ACOA.

Industry committee  The board members were Governor in Council appointments, made on the recommendation of the minister.

Industry committee  They received the news when the bill was introduced. If I'm not mistaken, they were spoken to beforehand, but not two or three weeks prior.

Industry committee  Yes.

Industry committee  I don't have that information, so I'm not able to answer that.

Industry committee  There were two parts to your comment. First, you said decisions would not be made in the Atlantic provinces. Did I understand that correctly?