We look at the role of the public service as stewards of public funds with a responsibility to ensure that the policies and programs that the government puts in place are done in a way that is diligent and respectful of the responsibilities that we have. When we think about the enterprise of innovation across any social, economic or environmental policy area, I think what we need to realize is that this concept of innovation is a discipline. It follows rigorous methodologies and is underpinned with responsible implementation. Innovation within the public sector needs to be taken very seriously. It has to be structured and follow a plan. In my unit, we follow this idea of being cautious, as the clerk put it in his speech last week, in particular as we implement our partnership approach through the Impact Canada initiative, because we want to ensure that as we learn to test out new approaches, and policy or programmatic methodologies, we do this in a way that is very thoughtful and engages all sectors of society. I think that's a message that we all should heed appropriately and follow quite closely.
On May 27th, 2019. See this statement in context.