Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to add my comment right at the outset that we at Environment Canada concur with the Auditor General regarding the valuable contribution that effectiveness evaluations can bring to decision-making, and we support the recommendations she has made.
At Environment Canada the evaluation function is an important contributor to our decision-making. It provides an essential source of information on the relevance and performance of the department's programs and has an important role to play in managing for results.
We use evaluations to make decisions ranging from program improvement, such as how an existing program should modify its activities or processes to enable it to better meet objectives, to ensuring whether there is an ongoing need for intervention or an appropriate role for the federal government before renewing programs. It provides me with information I need to demonstrate accountability for the use of public funds.
Environment Canada's evaluation function also plays an active role in the review of memoranda to cabinet, Treasury Board submissions, the department's performance measurement framework as well as individual programs' performance measurement strategies and plans. This ensures that program managers are considering, planning for and collecting performance information that can be used in future evaluations.
Our valuation function has had continuous improvement processes in place for several years, and we continue to look for ways to improve the value of our evaluations to support the department. Some of this was noted, and we were pleased to see that in the report of the Auditor General. We've accepted the two recommendations that the report addressed to Environment Canada. In particular, we agree with the recommendation to develop and implement an action plan to ensure that ongoing program performance information is collected to support effectiveness evaluation.
Past evaluations have included recommendations for improvement in the area of performance measurement. We think we're now starting to see improvements in the department with respect to an increasing number of programs that are developing and implementing performance measurement strategies, and we will continue to work hard at this, because it is critical.
Environment Canada also accepts the Auditor General's recommendation to consider the merits of including external members on departmental valuation committees. We have recently received a preliminary guidance from the centre of excellence for evaluation on this issue, and we're pursuing that examination.
Finally, I'd like to speak briefly to the concerns identified in the report regarding the capacity of departments to evaluate all direct program spending every five years. This policy was put in place to increase coverage, and this is an important goal, one we agree with. It recognizes the benefit of maintaining a broader base of effectiveness information for departmental activity. It is important to acknowledge that there are challenges inherent in striving for greater accountability. Increased evaluation coverage, in order to have more information on program performance, has to be balanced against the need to focus on program delivery and the realization of results.
The four-year implementation period for the policy allows us, we believe, the time to adapt our approach, realistically to expand the scope of evaluation activity within the context of department priorities, resources, and program requirements. To increase coverage within current funding levels, Environment Canada will adopt a flexible risk-based approach to planning the study's scope, the approach, and the level of effort for each evaluation. In so doing we will ensure that our evaluation resources are focused on areas within the department where evaluation information is most needed.
Finally, where appropriate, we will conduct evaluations that take a broader perspective on some areas of the program activity architecture, as opposed to conducting individual evaluations of each program within the PAA element.
These are some of the changes that are taking place at Environment Canada that were motivated both by the Auditor General's report and by the new policy on evaluation. We're looking forward to and believe we will see positive impacts in our evaluation program resulting from both of these.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.