Mr. Chair, this is the way I would respond to that. I think what needed to happen was perhaps just some more monitoring along the way by the department itself to determine whether this program was on the rails.
For example, we identified in here that in 2011 the department had completed an evaluation of the program and had found that both applicants and department employees saw the application forms as long and complex. Employees suggested combining the application form, consent form, and questionnaire into one form, but they didn't do that at that point in time. There were some things already being identified, but action wasn't being taken.
The types of issues we raised were raised by going in and looking at some things. It was essentially like a quality assurance type of program. We referred to the fact that the department didn't have that feedback loop of learning from why something was being overturned later on, and from that, whether it could learn something that would help it to do a better job at running the program.
On the transition to the tribunal, the deputy has said that they were too aggressive with their assumptions. Unfortunately, I don't think that's necessarily something that has only happened in this case, and I'm not just referring to this department. I think that's something that happens fairly often. When they are planning a large change, they need to make sure they're building in sufficient time to deal with the unknown sets of circumstances that come around.
If I were going to try to sum it up, essentially there wasn't enough attention paid to understanding how well this program was working within the department, I would say, because there would have been some things they could have done to make the program work better.