Thank you very much.
That concludes round one.
I have a couple of issues I want to pursue, Dr. Butler-Jones.
The first issue I want to talk about is your departmental performance reports. You operate a challenging agency, and as you indicated, it's a new agency. Probably, if we were to go back to six years ago, it wasn't a priority with either the federal government or the ten provincial governments. It is now, and you have a broad mandate.
As Mr. Christopherson said, the audit is fairly damaging; it's not a positive audit. Canadians should be concerned. Members of Parliament should be concerned.
I took the opportunity to read your departmental performance report. It was issued a long time after the audit was out. It was signed by the new minister. To be quite honest, it is what disturbed me more than the audit. I read this departmental performance report, and in everything here there's no indication that you have any challenges, risks. Everything is very positive. Every priority goal is being met and it's checked off—whether you have the right communications; “strengthen public health within Canada and internationally” is successfully met; “strengthen public health capacity in Canada through enhancements to public health work force“; “public health information knowledge systems” is satisfactorily met. It was so positive I would think that you and your whole staff could take nine months off. You have no challenges, no risk, and no problems.
Yours is not the only agency in the department that does this. It really grates on me that departments and agencies in Ottawa write this stuff for members of Parliament, because this, sir, is fiction. You have a lot of challenges. You run a tough department. I sympathize with you; it's not an easy job you have.
But I question why, when you prepare these reports and file them in Parliament through your minister, the Minister of Health, you do not identify the challenges, risks, and problems your department faces and the things you're doing to correct them. That, to me, is an honest dialogue that I would like to have with all 88 agencies and 22 departments. But we don't see it. If I took your departmental performance report and took the document prepared by the Office of the Auditor General, the first question I would ask is whether there are two Canadian public health agencies. And I know there's only one.
My question to you is, what dialogue goes into preparing this report? And please don't say it's accurate. What dialogue goes into preparing this report? Is it prepared under your supervision, and is there any reason you don't try to identify the risks, the problems, and the challenges you face, which are real risks?
I'm not being overly critical. When you start an agency as big as yours and with the challenges you face, the problems you have are real. It's not a criticism. But why don't you mention them here, instead of saying that everything is perfect?