Improvements are really the result of continuous work, initiatives for example such as the one you mentioned called the La Relève task force. Yes, many goods things came out of programs in order to train the next generation; I talked a little bit about this earlier. The Accelerated Executive Development Program is another one of them. Between 200 and 300 executives, including myself, took this program and benefited from internships at other departments and worked in other capacities. Added to this is the whole aspect of learning. We call this learning bags: six or seven executives meet, talk about a problem in a safe environment, so to speak.
We also do more coaching and mentoring than we did 15 or 20 years ago. La Relève task force gave us this; other reforms were undertaken in the past. We all realized, too, that the human resources management framework in the public service had to be modernized. It's thanks to exercises such as La Relève that we realized that we didn't have the tools needed. So, new legislation was adopted giving managers greater flexibility and greater capacity to face challenges. I think that what we want to do is to build on our past successes and, as you said on best practices, and there are many. We invented the learning bags for this program; a method that is now used at all levels within the public service. Even assistant deputy ministers meet from time to time to engage in this kind of exercise.
What we want to do is benefit from past successes and face new challenges.