Thank you for the question.
It's a very interesting question because I think we were rightly criticized as a government and as the public service for not paying enough attention to implementation once the ceremony announcing the treaty had finished and the lights were off and the TV cameras were gone. All you've done, then, is you've created a new government-to-government relationship with a new first nations entity and their ongoing relationships with that part of the world. The crown is still the crown, and it's not like we'll turn out the lights at INAC, as some people used to say, because somebody has to be the Government of Canada in that new relationship.
We've taken that advice and some advice from a Senate committee fairly seriously, so we have an implementation group. We have clearly developed a framework around implementation. We have guidelines and training tools for people who work in other federal departments, because it could touch on people who work in airports or training programs and other parts of the federal department. It's where our department has to herd the cats within the federal system and make sure they're aware of their obligations.
It's a large part of what my department does. It's a small part of what Transport Canada does, and so on. So we have to keep chasing, and I accept that responsibility. I've written to colleagues many times. I've pointed out specific issues. We've trained their officials. We've caught up on the reporting to Parliament, which was lagging until a few years ago. We worked closely with each of the governments or institutions that were created by the land claims agreements, the self-government agreements. We have an informatic system to keep track of all of the obligations.
One of the things that we were not very good at was this. You move on to the next treaty, the next treaty, and the next treaty, and you forget what you committed to in the previous one. We have a systematic database of that. I know it all sounds very bureaucratic, but it's actually very helpful, because even as people come and go and change jobs, they can plug in the software and they can see what the obligations are or the status. Some things are done, some things are under progress, and so on. It helps provide that accountability, which I think is the theme of a lot of our discussion today.