Certainly. I have been asked a few times the difference between an associate deputy minister and an assistant deputy minister. In my previous incarnation at Environment Canada I was the associate deputy minister. At Environment Canada there are basically two positions in the deputy minister's office: the deputy minister himself or herself and the associate deputy minister. They run the organization essentially as a team.
Different departments use different models, depending on the people, but you can think of those two people running the department. That structure would be found in any department across Ottawa.
In contrast to that, if you look at what an assistant deputy minister does, he or she tends to be involved in a particular branch of a department. In our case we would have an assistant deputy minister for the science and technology branch, another one for environmental stewardship, etc. They tend to be more line operators reporting up.
Briefly, in my previous incarnation as an associate deputy minister, the role was to help the deputy minister. If there was a very important file for the department, we would both be involved to some degree. With other files, one or the other would take the lead, but we would always work together as a team, each knowing at least a little bit about what's happening on every file.
That was the difference there. This time I have come back and I am the deputy.