Government Operations committee  No, it is less costly because the standard development system requires the creation of a committee and also public consultations. There are lots of rules of the game. It usually takes a year and a half, if not two years to develop a standard. In fact, certain steps need to be

Government Operations committee  Thank you for the question. GCStandards were introduced this year to meet the needs of our federal government clients. As you know, we are accredited by the Standards Council of Canada to develop standards in Canada. There are several constraints when it comes to accreditation.

Government Operations committee  In the accreditation system for any committee, we have to make sure that there is a balance between the producers, the users and what we call the general interest representatives. Normally, we have consumers, representatives from non-profit organizations, and so on. It depends on

Government Operations committee  It might be consultants or academics. They are often people from the university community or from non-profit organizations. They can represent the interests of the environment, for example.

Government Operations committee  Who selects the committee members? On our team, we have standard-setters who have expertise in their respective area, which means that they will look for participants in the industry and in universities. If it's a new committee, they will consult the other committees to see if t

Government Operations committee  GCStandards is a product prepared outside the accreditation system, which means that it is a product that is specifically for the government when it does not need a standard from the accreditation system. Let's take Fisheries and Oceans Canada, for example. Perhaps the departmen

Government Operations committee  Well, to clarify—

Government Operations committee  Reduction in personnel has been done completely through attrition. A number of people have retired over the years and we have not backfilled the positions. On the standards side, we've also put in what I would call efficiencies, because we've improved our processes. We hope to c

Government Operations committee  Des is absolutely right. We do use external consultants, mostly for auditing services. To answer your other questions, the number has increased over, I would say, the last four years, primarily because our staffing levels have been reduced. Around 2010, we had about 46 people on