Thank you for your question.
As I just mentioned in my previous response, I think it's still early days for the office. The office has been in place for three years, so “to what extent” is difficult to gauge at this stage.
I will say that it is the first time that a dedicated body has been in place to look at the procurement issues. Prior to the creation of the office, there was no dedicated body looking at issues arising from the supplier community. There was the odd internal audit that may have looked at procurement, and the Auditor General occasionally touched on it, but there was no dedicated body such as this office looking at procurement. I think that has helped to strengthen confidence.
The office provides a unique service, in that it helps review complaints. It supplies ADR services for the system and it reviews practice reviews. So from that perspective I believe it provides some assurance that someone in the system is monitoring what's going on, and I think it's a step in the right direction in strengthening confidence. Whether we can gauge that at this early stage is doubtful.
On that note, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, I have initiated a formative evaluation of the office to see in what areas we could further improve what we're doing and how we do it to strengthen that confidence.