Mr. Chairman, the department has been looking at this issue quite seriously over the last year and, partly, in response to some of the discussions we had with the Member in his former portfolio of Education, Culture and Employment. That department is one of our larger clients and a number of those projects were of significant concern to us.

The discussions with the department have gone very well. We have restructured our working relationship with them. We have consolidated some of the program financial management components within our own operation and provided a direct link back to the Department of Education, Culture and Employment. That exercise seems to be working quite well. We have looked at a number of other areas where we expect that we can make some improvements in operations. Some of that relates to the front-end planning on the projects to ensure that we are involved in an early stage and developing project budgets, to ensure that we have a clear idea of the scope of work of the project early on and can provide some feedback on how the budget should be established. We have also been able to discuss with the department the potential for including effective planning years in the project schedule so that some preliminary work can be done on a more timely basis.

There is a significant amount of evaluation and assessment work that is required at the front-end of a project to thoroughly establish what the scope and the project budget should be, and providing some additional time at the front-end in the planning cycle will assist there.

I believe we have improved the working relationship with the regional project staff as well and tied them more tightly into the headquarters planning functions that Education, Culture and Employment has provided.

Some of those same types of activities that we are doing with Education, Culture and Employment will carry over into our relations with other departments as well.