Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
My name is Yaprak Baltacioglu. As mentioned, I'm the Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Agri-food Canada. I'm very pleased to have this opportunity to appear before the committee to respond to your questions on this very important report of the Auditor General.
I was briefed on the initial recommendations of the Auditor General's report in March 2007, a couple of weeks after I took over my position. We took the recommendations and the conclusions very seriously, and we started acting on them even before the report was tabled in Parliament.
At the outset, let me say that we welcome the Auditor General's report and we accept all of its recommendations. It's invaluable to us in two ways.
First, it helped us improve the CAIS program. It told us which areas needed improvement, which areas needed strengthening. We acted on them and are continuing to act on them.
Second and most important, as Mr. Lennox has mentioned, the new business risk management program suite benefits from the recommendations of the Auditor General's report. We have used a lot of their conclusions in the design and the implementation of the new program suite, so we're very grateful for the input.
The department's management response is part of the report. I'm not going to go through that. We have provided the committee with a chart in English and French that shows the actions taken since the Auditor General's report was tabled. As you'll see, there's a lot of detail in that document. I'm not going to take up your time in the opening remarks, but I'll just give you some of the highlights of what the department has done.
Our focus has been on three areas: administration and accountability, transparency, and conflict of interest.
Regarding administration and accountability, this is an area in which the department strives for continuous improvement. This is not a one-time fix. We're always learning, we're always fixing, and there's always room to improve. It's very important to note that in this area we always strive to strike the right balance between getting money out quickly to farmers and putting in place checks and balances that will ensure good public administration, and the Auditor General's report has recognized the fine balance that we have to achieve. So that's what we strive for.
We have done a number of things since the Auditor General's report. We're measuring our performance better, and in the fall we will be reporting to Parliament and to the public in terms of our performance measurement. The Auditor General has told us that we put more risk focus on overpayments to farmers, and that did not take into account underpayments and zero payments, which is important for the livelihood of Canadian producers. We have revised our reviews to ensure that we included this group of payments in terms of our checks. We have shortened our forms. We have put in electronic tools for the producers so that they can access their accounts. We're hoping these types of actions that we have taken make the administration and accountability of the program better.
The second area is transparency. This is, again, an area of continuous improvement. In the next program year—actually, it starts today for the 2007 year—we will be providing the producers with a calculation of benefits document that highlights the areas that the government has changed in their applications, because one of the things the Auditor General said was that when we sent out the forms to the farmers, between the pages they had submitted versus what we had given them, they couldn't tell what had been changed and why. So we are highlighting the changes. Further work is needed in this area, and we will continue to do that over the coming years.
We have also put in a service called “My Account”. A producer can go in through the Internet with their codes and check the status of their payment, where it is, what's happening to it, etc. We're hoping that will increase transparency.
The recent targeted advance payments that we have made and the letters that went back to the producers were way more detailed and explained way more how these things were calculated. We are learning from past experience, and we are benefiting from the Auditor General's recommendations.
Let me turn to the last area of our focus, the conflict of interest. Over the last year and actually prior to the Auditor General's report, we have strengthened the processes and systems in the department to ensure that potential risk of conflict of interest is minimized in the department, not only in CAIS but as it applies to the whole department.
We have a values and ethics office with a website, a 1-800 number, and staff to support it. We started formal training programs. We started them with CAIS because we have to focus on CAIS due to the AG's report, but we're expanding it to the rest of the department.
Periodically I put out documents to all staff to remind them of the values and ethics rules that they have to abide by. As well, management has sent in bulletins, things we call News at Work, so that employees are aware of the rules they have to live within and how important it is to ensure that the ministry advises the employees of their obligations.
Also, when we hire a new employee or when any employee comes into Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, we now have revised our systems so that when they get their letter of offer, we ask them to acknowledge that they have received the Values and Ethics Code and to attest that they will comply with the rules of the code.
It's important to note that the code is values based. It's not a compliance-based code. The responsibility and the onus are on the employee to ensure that they comply with this important code, which is a pillar of Canadian public service. It is my accountability and my management team's responsibility to ensure that we inform our employees. As well, if we get any complaints, we do investigate, and we will continue to investigate.
To sum up, Mr. Chair, we welcome the Auditor General's report. It has informed our improvements to CAIS. The Auditor General's observations and recommendations have been carried over to the new suite of business risk management programs.
Mr. Chairman, we have made progress, and we will continue to do so, but we still have a lot of work to do.
I'm ready to answer your questions.
Thank you, sir.