Thank you, Mr. Ferguson, and your staff, for another fantastic job on behalf of Canadians by your department.
Like Mr. Lefebvre, I want to spend a few minutes of my opening time talking about your message. We don't receive those very often. It's somewhat outside the normal procedure. I thought it was interesting, given the impact of your predecessor's final message, and you have picked up on that. I must say, as someone who was here before and after, that for us it has been seamless going from one fantastic auditor general to another.
This message is resonating with this committee. You note that you're halfway into your term, and this is a reflection of some of your observations. It's also timely, because we're just a little over one year into a new majority government that has publicly committed to do things differently, so it's a great opportunity to revisit these things.
I thought the quote you used was interesting. You said that in terms of the audits and what's going on, in the immortal words of Yogi Berra—I attributed them to you in the news clip, but it was actually you attributing them to...but take the credit while you can—it's like déjà vu all over again.
That is exactly what it seems to be like, particularly when we're now seeing more and more repetition of audit findings that are similar. We've been on this over and over, but we're getting a bigger buildup of case study that shows this is the case. It's the “one and done”; as long as the departments can get through the immediate public scrutiny when you launch your report and when we hold a hearing, they are pretty much into safe waters. Our goal is to work with you to ensure that doesn't happen, and that we hold more focus on these things.
One of the things you have mentioned over and over again—you already commented on it but we have to keep drilling it down—is to do service well. I would like you to talk again about how you think government is looking too much at measuring how well they are doing their internal steps, and not doing enough measurement from the point of view of citizens.
I completely agree with Mr. McColeman that not only with regard to Canada Revenue Agency but in most areas where there's interaction with government, there's great frustration. People feel like they just don't matter. They are lost in the system. That's why they come to us asking, “Can you help me cut through all this?”
In terms of the refocusing that you think needs to take place, how does that happen? I assume it starts with the ministers and deputy ministers and works its way through, but how do you see you and us working together to bring about that cultural change so that the view of success is how well things are being delivered to the actual citizen, rather than how well we check off our internal boxes?