Our concerns around National Defence's management of its inventory and asset pooled items has been ongoing for many years—for 18 years, to be exact. The department submitted to this committee a detailed 10-year action plan to try to address the concerns with inventory management back in 2016. They are on track for the items in that plan.
We do monitor it every year. However, there are some really significant items that are yet to come, including the implementation of a new system and some bar-coding of inventory, which will help with inventory movement and management. Every year we do attend inventory counts. We do detailed testing of inventory. We continue to see an error in at least one in every four items that we sample, from a quantity perspective, a valuation perspective or a classification perspective.
It is our belief that until the internal controls around inventory management as well as the implementation of all the elements in the 10-year action plan are done, these errors are likely to continue. Hence, we will continue to monitor it.