Thank you.
Prior to my appointment at Environment Canada, I was the senior associate deputy minister of National Defence for a period of about 17 months. Prior to that I was the deputy secretary of operations at the Privy Council Office which, as you may know, is responsible for economic, social, and environmental policy matters before cabinet and for providing advice to the Prime Minister in those areas.
I think in both those assignments, I gained some experience of value to this job. First, I think, at the Privy Council Office I was able to gain an appreciation of the horizontal role of deputy ministers in terms of supporting both their ministers and the government agenda. At National Defence, while that was a change for me, I gained a lot of extremely valuable experience in terms of managing a very large organization. As well, of course, I also had the opportunity to work closely with the Canadian military, which was a great privilege.