As a minister in the “food chain”, if you will—I'm an ecologist, so I think in those terms—one of your main roles was to make sure that the act behind this was adhered to. One of your roles under that act was filling board appointments. You mentioned that you signed off on the board appointments. I believe you said the recommendations came from the PCO, and then you recommended them to cabinet, where they were approved.
I'm not talking so much about the initial appointments now. There were times when board members left the board and there were many vacancies. That went on for some time. From my own experience, I've sat on a couple of cabinet-appointed boards and administrative tribunals. There always seem to be issues around ministerial appointments taking forever.
I wonder if you were aware of those openings on the board, and why they weren't filled at a time when it seemed there was a real need to have board action in order to do a lot of important things. There were very few board members there. I wonder if you can speak about that. That was your role under the act. You were supposed to make those appointments to fill those positions.