Citizenship and Immigration committee  These reductions are an adjustment to the amount we forecast to be paid to the government of Quebec, and not an adjustment to the present amount being paid. The amount we pay to the government of Quebec under the agreement cannot decrease; it either has to increase or to remain t

Citizenship and Immigration committee  No, this amount does not include the contribution to Quebec.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Basically we were able to secure funding for two years to decrease the backlog. Those moneys were sunsetted, and we are currently in the process of seeking additional funds to again deal with that backlog situation.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Sorry, those are in the supplementary estimates for 2007-08?

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Just let me make a clarification here. This is basically money that's included in all the supplementary estimate items, and for the public notices that are talked about, that would be coming from the total allocation there in terms of the $3.2 million. The additional advertisin

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We do not have that authorization as we speak today, sir, but we're getting it.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  No. We basically have spent the money that was related to the public notice campaign for a little over a million dollars. That's been spent out of this money, sir.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Out of this money.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We're basically required by Treasury Board policy to ensure that our user fees do not exceed basically the cost of the service. We have provided every year within our department a performance report, a report that's required by Treasury Board on user fees and the costs related to

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That report is for the Treasury Board, and it is also tabled in the House every year. That's the requirement of the Treasury Board, yes.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Basically it is a total cost of providing that fee, not necessarily the unit cost. It's the cost of providing that fee or that service. We report the cost of that service, not necessarily the unit cost.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  You could get into a discussion of what's a unit in terms of what makes up the cost of providing that service. What we provide are the total revenues that we bring in vis-à-vis that fee versus the total cost of providing that service. That's what we're required to report.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  It's part of the overall costing of the government. What we report there is basically the cost of CIC only. In the overall cost what we're required to do is the costs of the overall government, including DFAIT and all other departments that provide services like the RCMP, CSIS, e

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That's included in the report that goes to Treasury Board. There's a category called “services provided without charge”, and that's where those costs are reported to parliamentarians.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Basically, the department runs an $18-million loan program for immigrants, and this is part of an annual review process that we go through when we assess the collectibility of these debts. On average, we collect over 90% of the debts, but there are some debts due to bankruptcy, s