Thank you for giving me an opportunity to better explain that yet again.
The office does not propose a policy for the government to adopt. That's the government's prerogative, not the auditors'. The auditors talk about the consequences of policy. It would then be up to the government machinery and to Parliament to decide whether requirements or laws should be changed, and in what fashion.
If you look at paragraph 1.61, our recommendation actually speaks to the fact that these organizations “should take concrete actions to identify and address barriers that prevent the systematic conduct of rigorous” GBA. It's saying that you need to look at all sources of barriers. The whole mandatory requirement may be one of them, but it needs to have a more thorough evaluation of what is actually stopping us from moving forward, and then, for each individual element, deciding what would be the best thing to do to move forward.
That's what we expect out of this management action plan that I spoke to earlier. They wrote a response. They said they agreed. Well, they need to take it back now and try to come back at some juncture and say, “Here are the barriers we've analyzed. Some of them may be the same as the ones the Auditor General's office has identified. But we may come up with other ones, or have a different view.”
Whatever it is, management has to conduct due diligence and then act accordingly to improve GPA implementation.