No. Very often the chair and the minister will meet and they will exchange. Their official powers are in the act; the minister can give directives to the board and the board can give a recommendation to the minister. These powers have never been used in the five years.
What the board is looking to is whether it's well managed or not. Like a private corporation, they have an audit committee for all the management. The minister gives us program direction; the board has no access to taxpayer files and has no access to programs. The minister has this access. The minister gives us the political direction we need, and the board gives us the management direction, just as a private corporation board would. I'm accountable to both, and my performance is assessed by both.
That model works well in areas in which there is very little policy content--we do no policy--and a very high operational content, which we do. Especially since the border points have left the agency, we are no longer involved in preserving the territory of Canada or defending the border. We are strictly involved in financial transactions with taxpayers, trusts and corporations, and businesses. We handle money. We collect it and we give money to beneficiaries, so it's very highly operational, with a low policy content, and it has yielded some results.