Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's a pleasure to be back here again.
I am just filling in for the parliamentary secretary, but I do happen to be a big fan of the estimates process. I've been at it for a number of years.
Based on the previous discussion that happened, Mr. Chair, it might be advisable that you have officials from the Treasury Board come and give the committee some overview on how the estimates process works. They've offered to do it for every committee. I've been at many of their presentations. It takes a while for it to sink in, but it's a great way to understand that you're comparing mains to mains, that the public accounts are six months behind the actual end of the fiscal year and comparing what you're doing. I think it's a very good point.
I think Minister Baird made a very good point. Just because you're allocated money for a program, if the program can be delivered at less cost it's better for the taxpayer. There's nothing wrong with being under expenditures.
One part of the estimates process that I actually like, and have used numerous times, is the plans and priority documents that go along with the performance reports that come out in the fall. Frankly, Mr. Chair, I'm not a foreign affairs specialist. It's not an area that I specialize in much. I don't know a lot about it. I have lots of people in my riding who are interested in the issues. So what I do is I print out the plans and priority documents and I send them to those organizations and individuals and say, “This is exactly what the department is doing”, not what we're doing politically, in a sense. I mean it has a political overtone to it.
I want to thank you, and through you, your staff, and the staff who are here, for the quality of the work that goes into these documents. It's very good reading. It highlights what we've done in the past in terms of numbers, even in terms of the number of people doing each strategic direction, and it tells you what the plan is for the next three years. So there's a real opportunity to have a real good discussion with your constituents on what is happening.
There's one part in your piece that I was very interested in, in the plans and priorities document. It's about the risks in your department. You have different risks than those in many departments. Those risks include, and I highlighted them, personal and physical security. There's a risk for cyber threats, as we know today, as we've seen elsewhere. There are emergency response issues that we have in terms of being able to respond to our goals, and the final one, which is relatively new, because of the amalgamation of the two departments there's a bit of risk there.
I would like you or whoever would like to comment on how you've approached those risks, and what actions you're taking.
