I think in terms of the backlog of comfort letters, if I can maybe step back a bit, obviously the Auditor General reviewed the Department of Finance, and particularly our area, back in 2009, and made two recommendations: that we introduce a better system for monitoring technical amendments and that we develop a plan for implementing dealing with this backlog; and—to the minister—the release of smaller packages of technical amendments.
I think we can say that we've done so. In fact Bill C-48 before you has the amendments that were contained in at least two technical amendment packages that were released for comment in 2010 and 2011.
The Auditor General found that there were approximately 250 comfort letters that needed enactment. In terms of the comfort letters that are sort of still outstanding in the backlog, I would note that we did release a technical package back in December. As it stands now, between that technical package and the amendments that are contained in Bill C-48, fewer than 25 comfort letters have not been released in terms of draft legislation at this point.