Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to make a couple of comments here. This finding of the Auditor General is quite disturbing, I think. It also is an opportunity for the government to recognize that we have sort of a systemic problem within the government that’s been identified by the Auditor General. The work that the Auditor General does is thorough. I find it fair and I find that they

often see things that we don’t see ourselves, and that’s the value of having an outside organization look at our work and look at what we’re doing.

There are three key barriers that have been identified by the Auditor General, and the chair of the committee spoke to those in his opening remarks. They’re pretty fundamental, and they affect not just one department but they affect all departments, they affect the whole government. It was interesting to me that the Auditor General, in the audits that he has done over the last six years, found that these three barriers existed in all the programs of the departments that they had audited.

The committee recommendation here, I think, is important. I’d like to suggest that the Cabinet and Executive need to give it the credit and the importance that it’s due. The Auditor General, in his report, mentioned not once, but twice, that these systemic barriers exist. I think that many of these things, although maybe not couched in the same language, have been mentioned by Members in this Assembly but also many times by Members in the 16th Assembly, and I just want to emphasize again

that it’s time that the government listened.

These issues, as identified by the Auditor General, are across government. It’s not just one department that they refer to. It’s referring to almost every activity that we do. I feel that the Auditor General has placed the responsibility in the right place: on the shoulders of the Premier and the Department of the Executive, who are responsible for the government as a whole.

I really don’t have anything else to add. It is important and I would hope that other Members will recognize the importance of this. I hope that the Executive, the Cabinet and the executive branch will recognize the importance of this, and I hope that we will see some action from the Premier and his department that will give us some idea of how the government is going to address these three key barriers. Thank you