Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Welcome, gentlemen.
As the chair said at the beginning of the meeting, he and the government are hoping to lead this meeting into clause-by-clause of a bill that the government would like to get through this committee and back to the House as quickly as possible. I guess whether we do that or not will somewhat depend upon your answers.
I was quite struck, Mr. Haddow, by your statement that this is a bottoms-up process. While I can understand that administratively within the bureaucracy you asked the people who worked for the government to identify those issues they thought needed resolution, and therefore they came up with the original ideas, I don't think they were given a choice as to whether or not to participate, because, as you also said, this is a priority at the highest level of the government. It seems to me they were told this was going to happen and then asked could they please identify the issues they would like to see resolved. When the direction comes from the top, I don't think there's any choice for bureaucrats to participate or not, so I'm sure they all worked like beavers to come up with these 300 issues.
Mr. Beaudoin, you talked about one of the goals being an improved quality of life, but how can you possibly deliver that when quality of life is defined differently in the United States, in Canada, and in Mexico? You just have to look at the goals of the three countries and you can see that quality of life is measured differently depending on where you live.
You also said that your website documents progress. Progress according to whom? If in fact the 300 issues that have been identified and the work plans that have been developed to deal with those issues are all coming out of the bureaucracy, how do you know that Canadians will think it's progress?
It seems to me this thing is rather circular. The bureaucrats identify it, they develop a work plan, and if they get their own way it's called progress. Seeing as we really don't know what's going on and no one ever comes before us to describe the latest initiative, the latest issue, the latest work plan, and the latest result, then how are the people of Canada to know that this is truly progress and will improve or enhance their quality of life, or indeed improve their security?
The other thing--