Merci.
The Auditor General tabled a report on user fees about nine months ago now. I'm familiar with that because I was before this committee testifying on user fees.
My colleagues can jump in here if I don't have this right, but what the Auditor General found was that some departments, like Parks Canada, for example, actually do a very good job with their user fees. Then there are other departments, such as the passport office, and I think another one was foreign affairs--the consular fees--where there are problems.
One of the things that has caused the problem is that user fees now, according to the User Fees Act, must come to Parliament and have a review to have the fees increased, but not everybody is going ahead and doing that. We have to encourage them to do that. In fact, what has happened in many cases is that the costs have gone up but the fees haven't. I think that's the general situation. So actually in most cases right now, not all of them, but most, the costs are actually more than the fees. I think that once the fees start coming through, you actually start to see some equalization of that.
Now, on your comment on the systems, you're absolutely right: some of the systems are not very good at setting out the costs. Some of that, again, is this issue we were talking about with Mr. Christopherson, and that is the issue of systems being able to talk with each other and share information. It's something we are working on, and I believe that on user fees you will see improvements in that file over the next the year or two, I would say, as we fix some of these systems issues.