Mr. Chair, I have spent many weeks reviewing this situation in my own mind. I can tell you that I believe my department acted responsibly with the information it had on any given day. The information was insufficient. There was, at times, uncertainty as to the duration of the outage. From day to day there were great efforts made on the part of all agencies, and certainly my department, to resolve the situation early on. When it became apparent that the outage could extend well into December, then we were certainly seized, at my level and at the ministerial level, in a very intense way to try to resolve the situation.
Could there be improvements in the way we did it? Absolutely. That's why what's crucial from my perspective is that there will be lessons learned. One of the key lessons is that we do need a formal communications protocol to ensure that our communication is timely and at the appropriate level--that it's not done as a tag-on to a particular meeting that was scheduled for another purpose, that it's not done through emails sent to junior officials within the department, that the notification be at the appropriate level.
I consider the appropriate level to be the deputy minister level. It is my responsibility to debrief the minister.