Public Accounts committee  That's correct. Those expected diary dates are based upon the system response. We've started to change that process. In November 2006 we rolled out a new pilot project to look at priorities and response times to each of the various priorities. It's on a grid, based upon the Crimi

Public Accounts committee  Absolutely, and that's what we want to get away from. Our new system is actually based upon what the police will tell us. We no longer will have intervention on those diary dates. What they tell us will actually be used in there. What we will be getting away from is trying to b

Public Accounts committee  Yes, other countries have come and had a look at it. In particular, Singapore has modeled their data bank...and other jurisdictions within North America have used the technology, our STaCS--a way of processing samples.

Public Accounts committee  Sir, if I may respond, we do have an ISO accreditation now. It's under 17025. We are in fact approaching the Standards Council of Canada, based upon the recommendation from the Auditor General that we put a little more robustness around the management part of it. They're going to

Public Accounts committee  Thank you very much for that. I think the two issues you are concerned about are forecasting and our ability to predict where we're going in the future. The DNA area has been particularly troublesome for us, simply because of the demand. It's a very powerful forensic technique

Public Accounts committee  There are two diary dates that get quoted. One is the corporate target of 30 days for completion of a routine case. Aside from the 15-day urgent cases, it is 30 days for routine cases. That came about from two sources. Chief Justice Archie Campbell stated that in an ideal world D

Public Accounts committee  We realized very soon that we couldn't meet the 30 days. It was an unrealistic expectation. So we decided we would give the investigator somewhat of a realistic expectation on when they could get results back. That was generally based upon how fast the system could respond.

Public Accounts committee  I'm sorry I didn't quite understand your question the first time. The expected diary date is the diary date in which the system can normally respond to a case. The turnaround time is in fact when we do respond.

Public Accounts committee  That's correct.

Public Accounts committee  With casework samples, do you mean?

Public Accounts committee  No. We work closely with scientific working groups in all of our scientific areas, and in fact I meet with the directors of the Montreal and Toronto labs on a very regular basis to talk about methodology and what we're doing. But to share case work back and forth is really out of

Public Accounts committee  Yes. We in fact do a peer review on every single case internally, and we participate with other labs on some external testing just to validate results, particularly in our DNA area. John, please respond.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you. Again, that particular question has been of concern. We addressed it with the heads of prosecution a couple of weeks ago at their annual meeting and again last week with the FPT ADMs in Calgary. The response is that quality assurance at the scientific level was in

Public Accounts committee  That's correct, and that's part of our quality assurance process: everybody has the ability to raise an issue on our quality level. It was raised with the technical leaders--the subject matter experts in our DNA area--and actions were taken to resolve it.

Public Accounts committee  There are programs within Canada. I don't know the exact universities or colleges, but you can come out with a master's degree in forensic science or a diploma in forensic science. The issue is that the vast majority of our applicants come from other academic institutions with a