Certainly Dr. Preston is welcome to respond. Maybe I'll start with addressing Mr. Christopherson's question, which will lead into answering yours.
You are not wrong. There were certainly growing pains. It is fair to say that there was tension between the entities that were responsible and created to respond to Operation Honour and to respond to the Deschamps report. We hired Dr. Preston in June of 2017 as a professional psychologist who is an expert in this field, and that changed the nature of the SMRC almost instantly. We learned that a capable senior bureaucrat was not what we needed. We needed a functional expert. That was the first step to developing the SMRC to meet the intent and vision of Madame Deschamps.
We did have some growing pains and it was difficult. But in retrospect, it was better that the centre walked before it ran. There has been time to develop the team, who are all professionals, to develop their 24-7 response capacity, because when they began they did not work evenings. They now work worldwide 24-7. We are expanding the responsibilities in response to what has been pointed out to us by the Auditor General. But I would say that we were on our way there equally on our own in expanding the mandate of the SMRC. It was difficult at the beginning. There is absolutely no doubt.
Dr. Preston can probably speak to some of that difficulty. I think we're on the right path now.