Thank you, Chair.
Philosophically, I guess, I'm not a person who believes in ordering and commanding results. That's an approach that government attempts to do quite often, and quite often it leads to a lot of talk and not a whole lot of action. We could even look at the Kyoto treaty itself as evidence of that. We sign on to something, we say we're going to reduce something by 20%, and we find out we're 35% or 40% over. We're all scratching our heads wondering where the plan was and why nothing got done. We feel that if we make a decree or a declaration, everything should automatically happen.
I think most successful leaders and successful organizations today would be highly critical of that approach. Take Dr. Deming and the people who founded the whole total quality management system and the concepts of continuous improvement. They would say that's not an approach that works. You can't decree targets. You have to manage a system and get those results. It takes things like good systems, good management, teamwork, commitment to a process to get on with things, and so on.
Really, what I'm concerned about today is whether in our departments we have actually.... I know that we had ten years during which we had lots of talk and no action.
Madam Meredith, are we making real and concrete progress in reducing our environmental footprint and the waste and mismanagement that goes on in the departments?