Yes, thank you for your question.
I refer often to intelligent risk-taking, which is essentially the point you're making references to. Mr. Chairman, in the department, because of the recent history around it, our people can be quite cautious, and frankly, they are cautious for the right reasons. We're dealing with taxpayers' cash. When it's not that, we're dealing with competitions, where people want to have a fair shake to access these contracts. Ideally, our people should be quite serious and they are serious about the business.
I find that if you want to create the right balance between intelligent risk-taking and risk management, Madam Meredith and I, with the framework we have, will create the conditions for people to feel more comfortable in assuming their responsibilities. Deep inside, I believe our people want to do the right thing. There will always be exceptions, and when they are caught we deal with them. Setting that aside, people walk in in the morning and they want to do a good job.
Often--and I think Madam Meredith said it--there are a lot of things coming our way, various acts and regulations, policies and procedures, and all that. This is frankly where I value the work of the Auditor General. I look at this as a recipe for me simply to apply the right ingredients and create what we need to do in order to get better. That's what the framework did. For me, risk--risk assessment, risk management, the issue of intelligent risk-taking--has to be taken in the context where people with the right framework will assume risk. It's just that when they don't know, they make mistakes, and then they don't feel good about it. Certain issues that were picked up in various files.... At PW they want to do the right thing, and when they know they've made a mistake they don't feel good about it. Our responsibility is to create the right conditions for people to assume the risk correctly, and I think we've done that.