Thank you, Mr. Chair.
This is my first committee meeting where I've had an opportunity to ask a question and I want to start things off on the right tone.
I have a couple of questions for you. You spoke in your opening remarks on the open government initiative, that three pillars initiative. You spoke very briefly about it. I was hoping you could elaborate on what you see as positives coming out of the three pillars of that open government initiative and what they might be.
Recently it was announced that Public Works is engaged in a 10-year plan to reduce its data collection centres--its legacy systems and so on--from over 300 centres to about 20. I think that's what the report that was commissioned came out and said. I'm just wondering what information you can provide, or what concerns you may have with that centralization of information and centralization of data, and how it will affect your office, if at all. How will it affect how government departments work with each other insofar as protecting the privacy of information of individual citizens, as departments are not supposed to be sharing information with each other and so on?
Last but not least, I'd like some comments from you. My colleague Mr. Butt did address this a little bit. I think we started going down this road. It's about some of the perceptions out there, about the varying standards when it comes to information that's received, depending on the different responses that are given or the different questions that are asked, particularly when it comes to certain organizations.
In particular, I'll ask about the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. If you can talk about some of the inconsistencies there, some of the problems that might be there, or some of the issues that should be brought to the attention of the committee, I would appreciate that.
Those three questions should use up my five minutes.