Thank you, Chair.
I have two points on that question as well.
First, it's very important to emphasize the importance of improving how well that department can demonstrate results. It's important for all the obvious reasons—taxpayers' money, etc.—but it's equally important for the producers. As you say, the problem now is that much of the benefit of these programs is anecdotal. The department is not in a good position to be able to say in any systematic way what kind of return taxpayers are getting and the kinds of improvements that are happening on the farm. So for a lot of reasons, it's important that the department improve its measurement.
On the causes, it's probably a better question to put directly to the department. There were a number of areas in this audit where we identified problems, but we also noted that in many instances corrective action wasn't under way. We were fairly impressed by the kinds of steps still not complete that were being taken by the department to address issues such as measurement and several of the other things we were concerned about.