Accountability and transparency are the buzzwords of any new government, as is true with this one. The notion in Germany that the prime minister's chief of staff is the one who's chairing these meetings holds it to a very high level of authority.
Mr. Gunton, there's the question of what these sustainable development strategies are meant to look at. It's great if federal departments are saving on photocopying or having a few recharging stations for electric vehicles. There's also this notion of every federal decision that's being made also passing through the sustainability lens. That seems to me, just in terms of a broader impact on something like climate change, to be a much larger fish to go after.
Am I conflating two different ideas around sustainability? I would hate to simply have an internal government approach to making federal departments more sustainable, as noble as that exercise is, because when I consider the power and the influence of each of those federal decisions over the sustainability of Canada, that seems to be a very much larger and more important objective.