I think there are a few points here.
First, it's the way the system operates at the end of the day. It's difficult to measure whether the policy advice being provided to ministers is adequate. In essence, that's our role. Our role in this system is to provide ministers with the best possible non-partisan advice.
This is an area that continues to evolve. We get better at it every year. Our tool kit for doing it gets better every year. I don't think there's ever going to be a time when we declare perfection. I don't think there's such a thing. It's continuous improvement—we strive to get better and better in our understanding of how to provide advice to ministers that helps them make decisions.
The disconnection is that while the advice we provide to ministers is fulsome advice, and while GBA is one component of a host of other policy lenses, ministers layer on an additional set of political factors that have absolutely nothing to do with the advice we're giving. That's appropriate because they are the elected representatives. They're the ones who are held accountable by Parliament through committees such as this for the decisions they're making.
The difficulty is that you can't use the decision made by a minister as a proxy to discern the quality of the policy advice that's been brought forward. I don't think we ever want to be in a situation where the policy advice coming from officials has to be taken as the definitive perspective on exactly what a minister should do. Absolutely not. We do not want to be in a situation where public servants become the decision-makers. That's not the purpose of the system. The elected officials are supposed to be the decision-makers.
I think the challenge for this committee, as well as any other committee trying to discern whether policy lenses are being applied appropriately, lies in figuring out how to hold ministers accountable if you have issues with the way they're making decisions at the end of the day. That may be an area one wishes to probe.
It's difficult for us to be in a situation to talk about the advice we're giving to ministers. It's very much an issue of confidentiality, and I would argue that this is exactly as it should be. Again, it's the basis of our Westminster system.