Maybe I'll start with the current position, that of associate deputy minister. You're right, there is nothing particular about my appointment relative to other associate deputy ministers. It's very similar to what I was at Treasury Board. You're really helping the deputy minister manage the department.
That can be done in a number of different ways. It differs for people. For example, you can be involved in every file that the department is involved in but without any particular people reporting to you; you're sort of jointly managing it with the deputy. At the other point on the spectrum, for particular files, you, the associate, will basically be the deputy, will stand in for them. They will delegate that responsibility to you and you'll manage that group of people and that file. Obviously you'll keep the deputy informed, but really you'll run with it.
From my experience, typically it's a mixture of the two. The associate does get involved to some degree with all of the files, but some of them can be very minimal. There are a few particular areas--these can change over time--where the associate would be involved. There you really are interacting directly on the file, much as you would as a deputy. You have a team of people who are working on it. You are having meetings, getting things done, and basically managing that file.
I would expect that, going forward, I'll have a mixture of those activities. Part of it is for me to learn a little bit about all the interesting things that Environment does, the science, etc., and part of it is really to help deliver on particular projects.
That would be similar to what I was doing at Treasury Board. The only other thing I'd add about Treasury Board as a central agency is that I was involved in management issues more broadly--how it applies across the government, how we're managing things in different departments. It was looking at it from a government-wide perspective rather than just Treasury Board.
Again, there I was involved in a mixture of particular files, but I was also standing ready to be involved in any file that the Treasury Board was involved in.
As a final comment to answer your question, if you contrast that with, for example, when I was an assistant deputy minister for the tax policy branch, or the financial sector policy branch, there it was very much a defined responsibility. You're responsible for providing advice up through the system in the area of tax or in the area of financial sector. You have a team. In tax policy, my team was made up of about 170 people. It's the largest Department of Finance branch, but small compared with the Canada Revenue Agency, at 40,000 people, or even Environment Canada, at 6,000 people. But it was a large branch, with 160 people that you were basically responsible for.
So that's the difference, as I see it, between an assistant deputy minister and an associate. It very much does depend on the issues of the day and, frankly, the desires of the deputy minister in terms of how he or she thinks it's best to manage the issues of the department.