Public Accounts committee  I could tell you what ours costs. I don't know what a public inquiry would cost.

Public Accounts committee  I can't tell you.

Public Accounts committee  Certainly. We are five, as you know, Chair, and I'll go from east to west. Larry Murray is one of our members of the task force. Many of you may know Larry Murray. He's a former deputy minister, having just taken retirement a couple of months ago. I think his last posting was as

Public Accounts committee  At the present time, we are driving towards December 14. Our mandate ends December 31, but there's a hiatus there. We realize that to bring forward a report during that hiatus just wouldn't make sense, so we're driving to have a report available by December 14, which is the middl

Public Accounts committee  Thank you, Chair.

Public Accounts committee  I think you make a very good point. What we found was that it depended on where you were in the hierarchy of the RCMP, how you were treated if you were found to have been guilty of misconduct. We found this to be one of the very serious cultural issues within the RCMP. Like you

Public Accounts committee  It would be premature of me. We're too early in our process for me to be able to tell you whether or not there are actually processes and procedures there that, had they been implemented, would have achieved the results you're talking about. So I need to know, first of all, wheth

Public Accounts committee  Well, first of all, the new legislation applies to the RCMP. It applies not only to members of the RCMP, but also to public servants who are employed by the RCMP. I'm not an expert on the act; I have seen many of the parts of it. For the first time, it's very clear now that there

Public Accounts committee  I can't say that I worry about it, but it is an issue we need to look at. As I pointed out in my report, merely superimposing a whistle-blower protection system on a system that has a code of conduct violation—that is part of a militaristic or paramilitary organization—doesn't qu

Public Accounts committee  As you know, I'd concluded that the investigation was not independent, and the Auditor General had found that it didn't have the appearance of independence. I went further. I found that it was not independent, but it didn't answer the question as to whether the investigation was

Public Accounts committee  As I said earlier, we are consulting quite broadly and in a quite open and transparent way. We're meeting with the entire caucus of the staff representative group. We're meeting with large groups of people internally, within the RCMP. We're meeting with the cadet corps and so on.

Public Accounts committee  We had a budget that we worked out with the Treasury Board. It was about $3.5 million. The task force expenses came in at just under $3.5 million. I can't give you the precise figure, but it is just below the budgeted item.

Public Accounts committee  The contract for the legal services was not, no.

Public Accounts committee  I will guess $375,000, but I'll check to make sure that's the right number.

Public Accounts committee  I'm sorry?