Yes, I can provide a bit more detail.
Basically, the work we do is really divided into two broad streams. One is actually the development of standards and maintaining standards, and then the certification activities that take place after.
It's an interesting comment you make about the value, because if you think about it, we have 4,000 Canadians contributing their time at really no cost to CGSB or the Government of Canada. So they participate and they come from all sectors, from industy, they come from the private sector, from consumer associations. They're academics and they participate in the committee work to develop these standards.
The only time we actually spend money in this area is for consumer groups when they have a challenge to provide funds for the travel, to make sure there's equity in the process and that all Canadian interests are represented in a balanced form. That's a very important part. But by and large, it's a very cost-effective model.
We don't charge any fees, in that sense, for the standards but we do get revenues from government departments because we're always based on the.... We don't simply develop a standard because we have an idea. It's at the request of some entity where there's a demonstrable need for some solution. For example, the Department of Transport may come forward and say it needs a solution, say, for fuel or for life jackets. Then we put together a balanced committee and seek funding, usually from one of these government entities, to help support this work. This is how it's done right across all of the major standards-writing organizations in this country.
Once we have the standard developed, of course, we then run a certification process where one is required, where there's a demonstrable need for a certification program. For example, I think if you talked to most standards organizations in Canada, they would say to you, be blunt about it. There's no money in writing a standard. Where the revenue stream comes in is in certification. For example, if you go into a home and you see the CSA mark on a light bulb, CSA receives a payment from the manufacturer every time that certification mark is put on a product, so that produces a revenue stream.
But for CGSB, because we're not in the private sector, we're focused on public interest in that sense, so we focus on.... We do have some certification programs. But we also do the ISO 9000 and ISO 14000. Again, we charge a fee to companies and to public sector entities that are being audited to that program, but at a very cost-effective model. So we're not, obviously, a for-profit entity, we're simply trying to recover our costs.