Stepping back—and although I haven't gone over this in detail, I'm sure my colleagues from the Privy Council Office and Treasury Board would have reinforced the same point—the role of the public service is to support ministers in making decisions. My role as Deputy Minister of Finance is to support the Minister of Finance.
The way to do that is to ensure that the minister is making informed decisions and informed choices. In that sense, the gender-based analysis is integral to the analysis we provide, but it's one part of a very comprehensive assessment. That's why, when we began to pilot with it, we decided to introduce it into the comprehensive budget assessment process. And that's been a key to the substantial progress that I believe we've made.
But clearly our role is to provide advice so that there is informed choice by those elected to make the decisions, and that's a vital part of what it's about. The Department of Finance doesn't have a hidden agenda, although it's occasionally helpful for people to think we do. We have a minister who is leading the department in terms of representing the government's agenda. So it's not even the Minister of Finance's budget; it's the government's budget.
It's not just the department; all departments can help support ministers in making choices and making decisions. The core of being a public servant is to have neutral, non-partisan advice based on the facts. That's what I see in government, and it's what I'm proudest of, in being a public servant. This is one element that I would say fits well into that body of informed advice.