Environment committee  I'm always very interested in meeting with stakeholders who are interested in our work, and I would love to see increased community engagement—

Environment committee  No one has asked specifically to meet with me about the process, but I have received letters from them, inquiring when I would start the process. I did write back to them to let them know that we started that on October 23.

Environment committee  You mean the submission of our reports. All our reports go to the Standing Committee on Public Accounts; that is how we are set up. Any parliamentary committee could invite us to appear and we would be very happy to talk about our work.

Environment committee  Thank you. I don't think we reallocated our people, really. We just sat down and took a much more global view to our audit practices and ensured that we have the right people in the right place. That's a decision everyone should be looking at when they run an organization, but it's one that's forced upon you when you have some constraints related to your staffing.

Environment committee  You are referring to some of the things that perhaps guide how we select our mandates or choose the subjects of our audits. We're always happy to hear what interests parliamentarians. It gives us another point of reference for choosing what we are going to audit.

Environment committee  As Mr. Hayes mentioned earlier, I know the Standing Committee on Public Accounts requires an action plan after each of our reports. We encourage all departments to act on recommendations we make in our reports and develop an action plan. If the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development wants to consider the reports issued by the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, I would encourage you to also invite the departments to consider the reports at the same time and to ask them in advance—

Environment committee  I have received communication from them. If I don't find a good calibre candidate in the current search that I'm doing, I am committed to expand that to use, perhaps, the services of a headhunter if I need to. I do invite them to reach out to our office if they would like to make some recommendations for us as we do this very important search for a new commissioner.

Environment committee  One of the sustainable development goals—I believe it's sustainable development goal 16 that talks about good accountable institutions—gives us an opportunity to take a bit of that expertise and make sure it's everywhere. Every audit that we do, whether it be a financial audit or special examination or a performance audit, should be able to identify which sustainable development goal our work is touching and then be able to comment on whether or not the organization is helping to move that yardstick to improve the country.

Environment committee  The government is definitely moving in a direction where there is a lot of cross-organizational push for programs to be delivered in such a fashion. I think the challenge from an audit perspective is that this just adds some complexities, as you can likely appreciate, to an audit.

Environment committee  As we've mentioned, it's always a good recommendation to make sure that, when you launch a program, you've thought about how you're going to measure its successes. When we see that missing in a program design, we take the opportunity to recommend that. You achieve what you measure, so every good plan should have some good performance indicators and good measurements to make sure that you know when you're achieving your intended result.

Environment committee  I just want to make sure I understand your question. You are asking what we are going to do to enable us to audit a greater number of agencies. Is that right?

Environment committee  When mandates are laid out in the law, we organize ourselves to be able to fulfill our commitments. This is what you are seeing when our organization reduces the number of performance audits. All our office's financial work is required by law. We make sure we fulfill our mandate, which is non-discretionary.

Environment committee  There are about 100 departments and agencies, 101, I believe. They would all be subject to assessments.

Environment committee  Do you mean tools in general, or tools related to sustainable development in particular? Mr. Hayes might want to answer that question.

Environment committee  Are you talking about harmonization in our office?