Public Accounts committee  Absolutely, sir, and we've been very proactive with this issue. We've tried to get out ahead of the curve. We've met with the heads of prosecution and explained it in detail to those folks so they can prepare their prosecutors. We've spoken to our client groups--the law enforce

Public Accounts committee  Thank you. The team that was set up in 2000 to address that audit functioned until about 2002, and was at that point disbanded. That team put in place some of the action items that we followed up on in 2003, such as the restructuring of the labs, the lab information management s

Public Accounts committee  My understanding was that the special projects group was put together to get the project started, with a hand-off to the management team. Again, I wasn't privy to the decision-making process, but that is in fact what occurred.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you. That particular area of benchmarking has been somewhat troublesome. In 2005 we attempted a benchmarking exercise with seven laboratories. The problem we found was that no lab was collecting a set of data to which we could compare our data.

Public Accounts committee  Nobody has specifically gone to the Swedish lab.

Public Accounts committee  Yes. We collaborate with all of the labs mentioned in this report, with the exception of the Swedish lab, which I believe is the only one we haven't paid a visit to. If I may follow up on the benchmarking issue--

Public Accounts committee  Yes. I may point out that that was a controlled situation. Following the installation of our automated process, we did determine very early on--you're looking at exhibit 7.8--that there were problems. We started to look at each of the issues raised by our people. We eventually na

Public Accounts committee  There were 216 cases about which we sent out letters to clients, advising them that there was a concern with the results. However, 87% of those cases did yield other probative evidence.

Public Accounts committee  No, I would not say that.

Public Accounts committee  Yes, 87% of the cases about which we sent out letters had other probative evidence included in them. Six percent were cases in which we did not find DNA. We don't know if it was because of the HEMASTICK or not. It would not be unusual for us to not find DNA in a case. The other 6

Public Accounts committee  The Pickton case certainly challenged us, but we were able to respond to the other investigations across the country.

Public Accounts committee  During the Pickton investigation we reorganized the forensic services so we could harness all of our resources across the country. As we ramped up the Vancouver lab to handle the demand for the Pickton investigation, we utilized resources and other facilities across the country t

Public Accounts committee  The only time they would accept case work from outside is if in partnership we asked them to give us assistance, and we do that collaboratively as a need arises. But generally speaking, the centre in Toronto and the laboratoire in Montreal do case work for their provincial police

Public Accounts committee  Thank you for that question. That's obviously information I've been asked to respond to several times in the last few months, and the response is that we injected about $2 million into all of the forensic laboratory services around the 2003-2004 fiscal year. Some of that money w

Justice committee  According to our latest data, as of February 19, 2007, there are about 1,752 rejected samples that have come in. That represents about 1.5% of the samples that are in there. We undertake a training program, through this training group that Dr. Bowen was just speaking about, to t