Mr. Chair, we are well on our way in implementing the action plan. The dates are indicated, certainly, as I mentioned already. We have already updated our guidance. We have significantly strengthened and enhanced our guidance, our operational directions to staff.
There is other work currently under way, certainly the work with the RCMP and CBSA on information sharing. We have already been in discussion with officials of those agencies to clarify the issue of authorities. We clearly recognize the need to update our memorandum of understanding on information sharing. As I said, our outline in the plan is to have updated information-sharing agreements in place with those agencies by December.
We—and I, personally, as the accounting officer—take this very seriously. Our program integrity framework, which we have significantly enhanced, includes quality control and quality assurance. It includes the requirement to come to the executive committee of the department, which is chaired by the deputy minister, every year with the outcome of all the quality control and quality assurance reports.
The management action plan is also something that is the subject of examination by the departmental audit committee. The departmental audit committee is chaired by an external member. It includes external members outside of the department. In fact, the audit committee provides a challenge function to the department and to the deputy minister to make sure that we are indeed following through on the commitments we have made in the management action plan. That is our internal way of trying to make sure that we are keeping our own feet to the fire and that we are taking this seriously and following up on these actions. We recognize that this is a serious issue and that we have to make sure we are seeing it through.