I'd be very pleased to talk about that.
I remember one time in another life, with the Office of the Auditor General, I was charged with the responsibility of leading an audit of one of these agency reports--in that case, it was an assessment, not an audit. I was given a draft of this thing. The agency report was designed to show the performance of the agency in meeting its objectives.
I happened to be up in Whitehorse, and I was flying back from Vancouver to Ottawa. I had about five hours, so I pulled out this draft report--it was 95 pages long. I read it across the country. About the time I got to Calgary, I was getting a little suspicious. When I got to Regina, I was getting really suspicious. When I got to Winnipeg, I was getting kind of angry. Because the 95 pages told a good story of this particular agency and what it did, but I couldn't tell from the words used whether what it did was good or bad, because I had no idea what the expectations for that agency were going into the year.
This is not to be critical of that particular agency. It's been a struggle in performance reporting of departments and agencies for a very long time. I think they're getting better, but it isn't the easiest thing to do.
I remember getting off the plane, and the next day I had lunch with the head of the agency. I said, “You know, this was an interesting read in one sense, because I could understand everything you did last year. But the frustration is I don't know whether it was good or bad. I didn't know whether you had a good year or a bad year, and that depends totally on what you say you were expecting to achieve during the year.” He sort of laughed, and said I was right.
In this particular case, the next year, and particularly the year after that, the agency did put expectations in. And I think the report was a lot more relevant, certainly relevant to committees like this.
That's what I'm talking about in terms of expectations, Mr. Godfrey.