Public Accounts committee  Various components are part of professional and special services. They include business services, management consulting, training, legal services and translation. There are approximately 12 different categories.

Public Accounts committee  It is within the responsibility of the deputy head for the management of assets within the department, so those questions would probably be better posed to CBSA so it can discuss how and why assets are in the state they are in.

Public Accounts committee  I'll take that one. At this point in time, we aren't identifying within the public accounts the actual reason for a loss of public property. There is just high-level information. The reason for the loss would be with the departments. Definitely there were some losses due to floods that were reported in last year's public accounts, but those are not necessarily identified at this point in time with the way they are tracked and reported for public accounts purposes.

Public Accounts committee  As I mentioned, departments would have the information that explains the nature of their losses. A lot of the government properties are self-insured, so there isn't the same regime with respect to making claims against an external insurance company. I cannot speak to what mechanics and processes are in place within departments in that regard.

Public Accounts committee  I can answer that, given that my team has been overseeing it. We did put a significant amount of work into this over the past year. We issued a directive on accounting standards to guide departments. We've provided them with information on how to code their transactions. We've worked with our IT folks to build in the information to allow departments to track it.

Government Operations committee  The writeoffs of student loans actually remove the debt from the accounts of Canada, but that doesn't legally discharge that debt. In the future, the Crown does retain the right to be able to go back and collect or recover the debt. The debt can be reinstated on our books at any time, subject to limitation periods or exceptions that may exist.

Public Accounts committee  Some membership fees could include things like fees for.... I'm a CPA. CPA fees are paid. That's considered a membership fee, so it's not professional services, but just within the standard object definitions, membership fees end up in there. It could be some international organizations.

Public Accounts committee  “Act” is spelled wrong on the previous page, where it should say “Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act”.

Public Accounts committee  Yes. Generally what happens is that there often are errata, and they are published after the publication of public accounts. There is a process by which we will advise you of any that are identified in advance of this meeting. It's generally departments or our office that will stumble across something in going through stuff and realize it.

Public Accounts committee  Sure.

Public Accounts committee  Can you repeat the page number, please?

Public Accounts committee  The large one—the $7.8-million special employer contribution—relates to the public sector pension plan, which was subject to the triannual evaluation, where there was a deficit found. That's the catch-up.

Public Accounts committee  The special payment last year would have related to one of the other pension plans, because the forces' plans, the RCMP's plans and the PSPP are done on a triannual basis. I'm not sure which one was last year's.

Public Accounts committee  I think it's largely because of the changes in interest rates and discount rates, and the actuarial funding evaluation done over time.

Public Accounts committee  We don't compute what the differences are to bring it back to the same discount rate. What is disclosed in the public accounts on page 85 in the pension plan note is the sensitivity analysis. An increase of 1% in discount rates on the funded has an impact of $27.9 billion on the liability and a decrease of $35 billion—