Merci .
The Privy Council Office plays two roles. One is as secretariat to the cabinet, so PCO actually organizes, on behalf of the Prime Minister and on behalf of the chairs of the various cabinet committees, the actual meetings of ministers. We provide advice on what could be on the agenda and the scheduling of meetings. We actually help to organize them.
Part of that role is to work with the involved departments that are bringing items into cabinet, to make sure that when items come to cabinet they are ready for discussion. One of the principles we try to observe in working with departments is to make sure that when ministers have items on the cabinet agenda and they're there to make decisions or provide recommendations, they have full information so that the proposals are well developed, the costs are understood, the benefits are understood--that sort of thing.
What Ms. MacPherson referred to in her remarks is that part of the role we play is to provide a bit of a challenge function, if you like. When a department is coming into cabinet with a proposal, we work with them to make sure there is full information. In a sense, we provide a bit of an opportunity to ask some difficult questions in advance to make sure the proposal is the best it can be. But certainly PCO plays that role in a facilitating sense. Obviously, the responsible minister is responsible for the program and the advice, and ultimately the cabinet makes the decision. But our job is to facilitate that process by working with ministries when they come into the system.