Public Accounts committee  I will take that as notice, Chair. I would perhaps, in consultation with the chair, want as much of our resources to be devoted to proceeding with our action plan, so I wouldn't want to lose too much time in that regard, frankly, but we will undertake to provide that as well as w

Public Accounts committee  It is public.

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, could I just undertake to review, and if inadvertently we have given any incorrect information about those numbers, I'd be happy to clarify that with the committee.

Public Accounts committee  Well, I know that there had been discussions during that period between officials in the department, including Department of Justice officials, as to the flexibilities and means of expediting these cases. That kind of thing was built into the assessment of what the caseload could

Public Accounts committee  In general, as I indicated, the savings were realized, as a point of historical information. Second, in orders of magnitude, those savings going forward remain a reasonable analysis. In the interim, in order to deal with the problems associated with the transition—the backlog, a

Public Accounts committee  Yes, I can. We did not know of those cases.

Public Accounts committee  Well, Chair, because the preceding tribunal did not tell us.

Public Accounts committee  It's that simple, sir.

Public Accounts committee  These tribunals enjoy a position of independent operation. It was judged, as I understand it, that part of that reality was that the department—which, remember, has its decisions being reviewed by that tribunal—was not privy to the caseload and the rate of resolution of the cases

Public Accounts committee  Yes, we have, and yes, we are.

Public Accounts committee  Chair, I have a couple of points in that regard. I did refer to the service standards. We have completed that work, as we indicated. We have not published them yet. We intend first to review those service standards with clients and stakeholders. I want to engage with my minister

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, I think the committee will understand that we are charged with the administration of the program under the terms of the legislation, and the legislation sets the standard of “grave and prolonged” as the test. That is a very high standard, and there are in fact situat

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, in the interests of clarity and in response to Mr. Arya's question about the caseload, those numbers we knew, and those are the numbers that informed the planning. My earlier reference was to cases that we did not know, which were very substantial—on the order, I belie

Public Accounts committee  The other services did not exist before this report. It may be up to them to decide whether it is useful to add anything else. However, as I said in response to Mr. Christopherson, on behalf of the department, I take responsibility for past flaws and mistakes. I would indicate t

Public Accounts committee  Absolutely. As in all departments, we have an internal auditor. We have an assessment team. We always had executives to manage the programs and we still do. The people in charge have to report their findings. There are mechanisms. Obviously, they are not perfect, but they exist a