Mr. Chairman, with regard to the first point raised by Mr. Laforest, on the constant planning of the performance measure, I think that the government made good decisions in the year 1990 when it required the departments and agencies to report on their performance.
However, it took a long time before people learned to do it properly. Some spent too much time looking for the perfect formula to represent what they were doing and how to measure the result. I in fact criticized that slow approach saying that looking for perfection was detrimental to the progress of something more concrete. I recognize at the same time that this was not easy. There are some government activities which are not easy to measure and this requires some design work to fully understand how to measure the performance of various departments and agencies.
With regard to the second part of your question, if I understood correctly, namely if there are constantly too many changes in the federal government at the level of the management systems, accounting systems and so on, I would reply that I don't think that it is the case.
In some respects, I would say that changes are not coming quickly enough. For example, I remember that when Mr. Martin was Minister of Finance, he had decided that the government should switch to an accruing accounting system. This process took a very long time and it may not yet be totally completed.
Therefore, are there too many changes happening too quickly? I'm not convinced of that. In fact, the government should be able to take a turn sometimes quickly and more quickly than it does so usually.