Thank you, Mr. Chair.
First, I'm pleased that the findings of the audit recognize a lot of the work that was done by the Treasury Board Secretariat to ensure we gave departments a lot of support and guidance in the context of integrated risk management. That's my area of specialization.
As Madam Cheng mentioned, when we're looking at integrated risk management, we're really looking at the holistic approach the departments take. Risk management is nothing new in the Government of Canada. We've been doing it for a long time in the context of health and safety and national security. In the context of financial risk management and human resources risk management, what was being considered was how a lot of that risk identification and risk management is done on a holistic level at the departmental level.
In the private sector, we talk about enterprise risk management. One of the key elements in that area is the corporate risk profile: departments will identify some of the key risks and determine which of those they are going to be addressing in the context of their strategic and operational priority setting.
In 2003 this was an area departments had been working toward achieving, but they needed some guidance with respect to how best to put those processes in place. The Centre of Excellence on Risk Management was created. We provided guidance and tools for departments. We spent a lot of effort sharing best practices with departments. We're finding that essentially they pretty well all have good corporate risk profiles that are used as part of strategic and operational planning. You'll find the richness of those corporate profiles in the risk analysis and the RPPs, reports on planning and priorities. A section of the RPPs identifies the key risks of the departments and how they are planning on addressing them within the planning framework.