We've also seen over the last period that between 2015 and 2023 is when a lot of this work was evaluated. There have been a lot of changes, not only the splitting of the department and the adding of the indigenous health services, but our government also came in with very ambitious goals to do more on reconciliation than any government has done in the history of this country. I think we've heard this time and again. When I go out to meet with indigenous communities, they say that this Liberal government has actually been the most progressive in helping to advance issues that have existed since the beginning of our country.
We're seeing increased investments to try to make progress on these things. I also think that we're probably going to see some slippage in voluntary timelines as the government says.... I was involved with Parks Canada, where we were doing things like establishing national parks, which are really hard to have hard time frames for. I would think that with these departments, where they're involved in things like land claims and reconciliation and relationship building, there are a lot of conversations and there are not hard timelines. You can project that we're going to have x number of land claims settled or other things done within five years, but if things don't come together, that's not going to happen. There would have to be flexibility, I would think, in being able to slip....
The other piece—and if you want to touch base on that, I'd like to—is that I wonder about extenuating circumstances. We had COVID hit during this time period that you've looked at. I know one of the conversations that I often have is that our government said that within our first mandate in the 42nd Parliament we would end all boil water advisories. There has been significant progress made on those, and again a lot of money has been spent. During COVID, many first nation communities had some of the hardest lockdowns in the country. They were saying, “For the protection of our community, we do not want outside contractors coming in.”
In your report, when you get into the quantitative data, did any of those kind of extenuating circumstances get looked at? I would think the last three years we've come through have probably caused some delays in achievement of goals, not only in these few departments but also probably across the federal public service.