Thank you, Mr. Chair.
And thank you again for appearing.
Just for the record, I want to express our disappointment that the minister has not appeared. We fully expected her to be here. It's our opportunity to question her.
I have a couple of questions.
I noted that in the report of the Auditor General in 2009, she reported on red tape. Now, this government has been very diligent in saying that it's going to reduce red tape for businesses in Canada and reduce the intrusion of the administration.
The Auditor General, in her 2009 report, on page 27, says“[b]urdensome administrative processes hamper effective decision making”. I know, from my personal experience working on major CIDA projects in Indonesia and Bangladesh, that the level of reporting can sometimes go to the point of absurdity, and it can be hard to find time to actually deliver the aid project.
I wonder if you could tell us if you've included in your main estimates any kinds of initiatives for reducing that administrative burden in response to the Auditor General. And in what way does that improve the delivery of aid? In some way, does that have to do with reducing the number of PYs in CIDA? In other words, there's less work to do administering all of this reporting.