Generally speaking, the services that are appropriately billable to the consular services fee are true consular services provided by our staff abroad. Those would be the sorts of things I've described in terms of assistance to Canadians abroad in cases of disaster or crime, or similar situations.
What are typically not appropriately billed to the fee are the passport services that we provide abroad for the issuance of passports. At the time the fee was originally instituted, the interpretation made by the department was that the cost should be deducted from the gross costs of our consular program, where the actual revenues that we received from agencies like Passport Canada.... The assumption that was made by the department was that those revenues represented fair value for the services we were providing on their behalf.
After having the opportunity to discuss it with the Auditor General, it became clear to us that it was an unreasonable expectation. So you see the recalculated or corrected calculation in the report. We are continuing to do a range of things to try to clarify the extent to which the surpluses pointed out by the Auditor General suggest there is a need to adjust the fee forthwith.