I'm glad you raised that point about influence, because again we've heard today that it's very important for us to be working with other countries and even with our own departments.
In your recommendation 2.48, you say, “The Department of Justice Canada, in consultation with domestic and foreign partners, should assess the reasons for significant delays in processing requests for extradition or mutual legal assistance and develop strategies to mitigate where possible”.
When I first read this, Auditor General, I kind of scratched my head, because it sounds a little wishy-washy at first, but I think what Chief Superintendent Slinn said in his testimony today about how important it is to be building those relationships points out that there is a real inherent value in that.
The only thing I questioned in my mind is from a management perspective. If I have an employee and tell that employee that I want them to track how long it takes for another department in another country to get them the materials they need to do their job, if they're spending time documenting that—and that's what I think has come up from this—they would not be able to do other work, such as, for example, picking up a phone, barking on the line, and asking for that information and following it up, so to speak.
Is that really what they are doing here, Auditor General? You have suggested they put in a process so that they can evaluate and then go to our major partners like France and the United States and say, “Here are the numbers, the hard data we have”, and put it in front. Is that what the thrust of this recommendation is trying to do?