Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Don't get me wrong. Just because you take one small step in accountability, it doesn't necessarily mean you're going to have an adverse effect on performance. I'm saying that there is a balancing effect here. All good governance principles are not absolutes, so you have to be car

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I think if you looked at any provincial government, or indeed any municipal government, their reporting requirements surely would include reporting on any kind of commercial ventures. For example, the Government of Canada has several ventures that make a lot of money. The Bank of

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  One of the points I made was the difficulty of achieving good accountability in the public sector. I'll elaborate a bit on that. As I said before, accountability a number of decades ago was really looked at from the point of view of the propriety of spending money. Was the money

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I support this initiative, for sure. Will it solve all accountability problems? No. I wouldn't mind addressing this government-to-government issue, because Ms. Sutherland raised it. Is that all right? I don't want to waste your time.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  There is a sort of assumption that because this is a government-to-government relationship, each of the governments—that is, the first nations—should be allowed to essentially decide on what kinds of accountability relationships and that sort of thing. I think there are some real

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Right.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  A lot of things could certainly improve the situation. I really like certification systems. They are a tool that is being used more and more in public administration and indeed in administration in the non-profit sector. You even see them in the private sector. By certification s

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  One of the notions about good governance is if you want it to be sustainable, it really has to come from the grassroots. It has to come from the folks themselves. I put this teaser out that there was one example of an amazing transformation in terms of governance—one of the very

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  That's my thought for the day.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I'm sorry, I apologize for that long answer. I should have been much more succinct.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I can get by.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I have written on several occasions...and I'd be happy to provide you with the publications, but first nations have an extremely dysfunctional governance system. It's hard to imagine anything more dysfunctional than what we have in Canada vis-à-vis this first nations governance s

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  With the magic number, the 168 reports that the Auditor General noted in 2002, I think, and in coming back several times, noting that the reporting burden hadn't been lessened...I don't see this type of initiative as having a huge impact on that. I think you should perhaps addres

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  No, of course, it doesn't. That's why I'm saying in my introductory remarks that this is a fairly modest initiative. Don't get your hopes up that suddenly by passing Bill C-27 there's going to be light at the end of the tunnel. Of course, there won't be light at the end of the

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  How could you answer that question other than in the affirmative? Of course, good accountability, as I said, is a universal norm. Transparency is absolutely fundamental to accountability. It's not the be-all and end-all to accountability. Accountability is a very difficult thing