Public Accounts committee  I would say that when I first became a deputy, it was probably a good year to two years. I felt much more comfortable, because I knew how to ask the right questions, when I moved to the next department after five and a half years in the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, which was not the easiest department to manage.

Public Accounts committee  I was there for five or five and a half years.

Public Accounts committee  Yes. I was also deputy minister of HRDC/HRSDC in between there, for a period of two and a half years.

Public Accounts committee  We have some colleagues from PCO, if you want to get into the tenure of deputy heads. If I look back on my career as a deputy minister, I would argue that when I first became a deputy minister at Fisheries and Oceans, it took me a fair bit of time to get a good understanding of—

Public Accounts committee  No, I think once you become a deputy, you take on the role. When I look at HRSDC.... In the Department of Fisheries, I had ADMs who had been there for 20 years in some cases. You rely on your assistant deputy ministers. In some departments there are associates who are basically equivalent to a deputy minister.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Those are very good questions, and unfortunately there's no simple answer to all of this. If I could start again with the department, at the end of the day, as I said, the deputy head has the overall responsibility. Through the various mechanisms we're putting in place, we're trying to ensure that issues like those that have been raised here do not happen again.

Public Accounts committee  Again, I know you've made certain recommendations in this area, and as I said, we will have to look at how that all will work. Clearly the way the model works at this point is that the Comptroller General provides functional leadership. He ensures the standards are put in place.

Public Accounts committee  I won't comment on the specifics of the firearms project, but to answer your question, yes, I think that is an important objective of the Treasury Board Secretariat. As well, as you know--and the Comptroller General has been here--we feel it's very important, and again it's consistent with the accounting officer model, that as we move to that model we must ensure that the deputy heads have very good oversight functions within their own organizations.

Public Accounts committee  We'll want to look at that recommendation very carefully. It clearly is one approach. I come back, in trying to assess the recommendation, to asking how does that recommendation align again with the accounting officer model that we're putting in place, which is, they are responsible and they must sign off the accounts for their department?

Public Accounts committee  Perhaps I could add to that. This is why departments over the past number of years have fully adopted our management accountability framework--which is nothing more than that. It's a framework by which they manage their departments. It's been built on modern comptrollership. It sort of takes many other approaches and brings them together as a management framework.

Public Accounts committee  Under our system, which is going to be reinforced again by Bill C-2, at the end of the day the deputy head is responsible for the day-to-day management of the departments. We undertake assessments of the management competencies of the departments. We then identify them and work with them.

Public Accounts committee  I'm going to let David Moloney speak to that.

Public Accounts committee  Well, there's no such thing as a contract—

Public Accounts committee  No. Under the new act, deputy ministers will be designated accounting officers. Basically, under the new act, they will be responsible for the day-to-day operations of their departments and for signing off the accounts of their departments. It basically codifies what's now in practice, but that is now specified in legislation as a role for the deputy heads.

Public Accounts committee  No. Again, this is largely the role of the deputy in terms of the day-to-day management of the department, and it has largely developed through precedent. What we are doing now is codifying in the legislation the responsibility of the deputy head as the accounting officer. As a result of that, as I said, the model will clarify the responsibilities of the deputy to ensure that the resources are organized and deliver departmental objectives, and that there is a strong system of internal control.