Public Accounts committee  They had no mechanism for capturing that.

Public Accounts committee  That's actually information that we received from the Canadian Forces. They actually did have that data.

Public Accounts committee  We did.

Public Accounts committee  We didn't have data on what their status was at origin.

Public Accounts committee  The logic was that this was the maximum number or percentage of people who could avail themselves of that service--basically, since the purpose of the policy was to try to stimulate people to do so, for the very first time, because previously these expenses weren't allowable.

Public Accounts committee  You could. In fact, the logic model that was developed by the committee didn't account for that eventuality, or it saw that there would be a very small percentage.

Public Accounts committee  As I mentioned before, we did have knowledge, obviously, of the number of employees who did strike and did exercise the personalized fund. So we did have some idea of a higher estimate than the actual number of people that Royal LePage was reporting to us. By 2002--and I think this is the contract you're asking the question about--or maybe it was 2004, but in either case, it was decided, because the population of the pilot wasn't sufficiently large and the program--

Public Accounts committee  You're quite correct that we didn't make the adjustment. The logic was that there hadn't been enough change or enough time that had elapsed since the 2002 contract, because by the time we were into the RFP process, it was, I believe, only about a year or so into the 2002 contract.

Public Accounts committee  Everybody wanted the contract to be out quickly, because at the time--and my colleagues at Public Works will jump in here, I'm sure--the previous contract had been essentially set aside. Obviously, we wanted to put a new contract in place as quickly as possible, because the service is provided by the contractor, and the department didn't have the capacity to provide that service themselves.

Public Accounts committee  There was another issue, as well--and I wouldn't characterize it that way--and again, I would also ask my colleagues at Public Works to address this. It was felt that in the interest of fairness and to keep rebidding costs reasonable, we shouldn't change too many of the provisions of the RFP, particularly where they hadn't been questioned in the past, and this was one element that hadn't really been questioned previously.

Public Accounts committee  It is being questioned.

Public Accounts committee  It's probably a question that's best fielded by the Treasury Board Secretariat. It was a policy decision taken, as I mentioned before, in 1998. The main reason for it is that the old policy was quite old and didn't anticipate real estate commissions on houses of values of $1 million and more, which was becoming a little bit more common.

Public Accounts committee  That's right.

Public Accounts committee  I'm sorry, I misinterpreted your question. Now I understand. You're quite right, at the end of the day, the incentive is $12,000. You've got that number correct. That includes any expense related to employees retaining their homes, including project management. We don't pay them anything above that amount, other than the costs of a moving van, etc., which would be the normal cost of moving.

Public Accounts committee  That's right.