I'd be delighted to. I appreciate the question because we have a project right now at CCAF. As I mentioned, we put out this report recently, called Users and Uses, which concluded in essence that the intended users of performance reports, namely the media, the members of Parliament or legislators, and private organizations or NGOs are not using those reports.
I think our initial focus was mostly on the legislators and why they're not using them. In my response to Mr. Williams, I sort of implied that part of the reason is the language used. The type of information provided is not something that legislators are finding useful.
At the federal level, there was a very good report done in 2003. It was a subcommittee on the estimates process. There were some very good recommendations in that report. I think they were talking more here about the role of the estimates committee, but I realize that PAC also reviewed an Auditor General's report a couple of years ago on departmental performance reports.
One of the recommendations was that it's understandable that legislative committees really should be the ones using DPRs in the estimates process. But when you're talking about rating the readability of the reports, one suggestion was that another committee might do that.
For the last five years, B.C.'s Auditor General has actually audited—if you want to use the word “audited”—or reviewed and graded departmental performance reports. In theory they're supposed to go to the PAC. In the case of that legislature, as you know, it had only two opposition members, and I don't think the PAC functioned as a result of this. It's another contingency our system relies upon. In theory there would have been a role for the PAC there to look at those reports.
I don't know if that's a helpful answer.