Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Let me make a very short comment on the first part, about implementation of recommendations. One of the things we do in the office is what we call follow-up audits, where we go back and actually assess whether government is making satisfactory progress on addressing issues we've raised in previous audits. We call them status reports. Our report of February 2008 will be devoted strictly to environmental and sustainable development issues. I think we have nine or ten audits coming in that area, on everything from pesticides to...a whole range of them. We will be assessing whether government has made satisfactory progress or not in dealing with the recommendations that were made in audits going back sometimes several years.
The question of creating an independent commissioner is of course a decision for Parliament. I would just say that the audit function has to remain separate from the policy advice evaluation of programs. Those two functions are really inconsistent. In order to have an effective audit function, you must be independent from, if you will, the management and the establishment. If you're involved in establishing policy, you cannot then audit it objectively.
We believe that the audit function we've carried out in the office through the commissioner to date has been very valuable and very good. There is, though, an expectation that we can do policy advice evaluations of the effectiveness of programs. That is work that we cannot do, that is inconsistent, and that could actually damage our office if we were to go into that kind of work.