What we are free to do, and what we have done in a couple of areas, is set up advisory committees that are essentially voluntary. I mean, we don't pay people to be on those committees, although we will pay their expenses. We will fly people to Ottawa for the meetings.
Two are under way now. We have embarked on a process of changing the role of the ombudsman. One of the things we concluded was that we'd reached a certain plateau in dealing with some institutions. It struck me that there's a kind of constant routine with some institutions in which you're simply complaint-driven. You get complaint investigation report after complaint investigation report without getting any sense that you're actually changing the behaviour of the institution. So we are establishing a prevention function, without abandoning our obligation under the act to investigate complaints, and asking institutions in which we see some chronic problems how we can sit down with them and actually talk about how they can meet their obligations under the act.
As part of that re-examination of the role, we've set up an advisory committee on the role of the ombudsman. We have brought people from across the country, and every few months or so we have a meeting and go over things.
Similarly, I feel very strongly that universities have a role in terms of official languages. We've embarked on a joint study with the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada. As part of that study, we put together a consultative committee of people from universities, the federal government, English-speaking universities outside Quebec, an English-speaking university in Quebec, French-speaking universities in Quebec, and French-speaking minority universities outside Quebec, just to make sure they were aware of what we were interested in and what we were doing. There was some discussion about the questionnaire we were going to embark upon with the institutions. We found that input to be very useful in both cases: the consultative committee on the role of the ombudsman and the one for universities.