I'm probably not going to endear myself to some of my former colleagues, but, in any event, if you have something like this, which is a government-wide issue where responsibility for implementing is distributed across the government, the only way you're going to get change, in my opinion and my experience, is by accepting that it's going to take a while and having the system—the Clerk and the Prime Minister—say “these two deputy ministers are responsible for ensuring that all of this is going to happen across the system”. You sort of create a very high-level tiger team that is responsible, and it will appear in their annual evaluation, if you want.
If you don't do something like that, which empowers and insists on somebody who's very senior to keep pushing on this over time, it's very difficult to effect change. It's also very difficult because we may have another major crisis of some sort in six months or so, and this will get pushed off to the side.
Therefore, my advice is to very clearly articulate a statement on the part of the government at the highest levels, and then have the government say to the Clerk and to the Treasury Board Secretariat, “We want this implemented, we want a report every six months or every year, and I want to know the names of two deputy ministers or agency heads who are personally responsible, through a committee or whatnot, to ensure this happens.”
Even with all of this, as your question implies, culture change is very hard to do. I think probably there were two or three or four departments not in the core national security area that require special attention. I think it would be helpful if your committee could identify which ones these are and have, again, special laser-like attempts to tighten things.