Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
We too find this unacceptable, the numbers that we see in the report. I have to say I was surprised by what I saw. I didn't think it reflected the way we actually operate at PSPC.
I'd like to tell you a bit about what we do. Maybe that explains the numbers that we have.
The first thing is that in every letter of employment, the employee signs the letter, and agrees that they will abide by the code of values and ethics. They will look at the conflict of interest and let us know, and fill in the forms within 60 days of their appointment. They undertake the obligation to take the course of values and ethics through that. Now, I think part of the issue—and it goes back to data and collection of data—has been that this is how we verify that and collect that information.
The second thing we do is we focus a lot on the high-risk areas. For that, where the sense of reassurance for us is that no one will get their delegated authority without having taken that course. That was a bit of the check for us.
Again, I'm not sure that we have the appropriate tools to report some of this so what we did was launch, in April, a management system to actually track and help managers track that so we can report on the numbers, be able to track them in time, be able to be sure that we do as, Mr. Glover said, what we said we would do.
We've also introduced a new online ethics awareness tool. We've also introduced a new online course to identify and report fraud and wrongdoing. That was launched in May. I have to say that in preparing for this committee...I'm going to go back and see what areas we're actually going to make it mandatory. I think not leaving it as an option for some of the high-risk areas is going to be important. We're going to do that.
We also have conflict of interest training that was updated in the spring. We have introduced a number of measures since the report to build on what we were doing already. I think the tracking and making sure we have the tools to really ensure that we're doing what we said we would do, that we keep managers and executives aware of that, and we give them the tools to track that, is very important. We've put that in place.