The notion of the original act is still the basis for many of the pieces you see in the bill, which is transparency. Transparency was a major portion of the first act, and it has been a major portion of our efforts to date.
With respect to accountability and the enforcement types of measures, as was eluded to, we now have managed to embed those throughout the act, starting at the principle level and talking about results, about the accountabilities with respect to targets themselves that must be measurable and time-bound.
Under the old act, departments only had to create a plan. They never had to report against their plan. That provision is new, to require departments to report twice within the three-year cycle on what they've achieved.
As a sustainable development office inside of Environment and Climate Change Canada, we work with Treasury Board Secretariat to provide guidance to departments around what should be in the nature of those plans and those reports so that we have some consistency for you to view them.
Those reports will now be tabled in Parliament. Upon tabling, they will be immediately referred to this committee so you will have access to all that information. That is a major change in the transparency. Those levers along the way afford points in time for review and assessment by you, by the public, by the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development.
All 26 departments released their plans the first week of October; that was our 100% compliance. Yes, everybody did what they currently have to do under the act and released their plans this past October. We're currently looking at all of them and bringing them together in an electronic form which we will release publicly when we have amalgamated them.
In the strategy, there is a commitment to do resilience and adaptation planning. That commitment in departmental plans was noted by many departments. We will amalgamate them so you will now be able to look at individual commitments and see how many departments are doing those things and the program measures they have in place.
All of that, we believe, improves transparency and accountability.