Perhaps I'll start, Mr. Chair, and then Ted can elaborate, because it is an important point.
I think the issue that's been raised is that when we put more resources into audit activity, for example, and we say that we will generate $100 from those audits, we give that figure to the Department of Finance and the Treasury Board. We're very transparent about that, but there is an important element there, which is that while that's how much we might identify through the audit, a bunch of things can happen after that.
It could be sent to our appeals division, which could overturn it or not. It could be fought out in court and we might lose the court battle, so we could lose some of that revenue there. Also, at the end of the day, in terms of how you started your question, there's the amount that gets written off. If somebody goes bankrupt or we can't collect that money for some reason, we don't get it. You might start with that $100 at the beginning and end up with something less.
I think we certainly have been truthful in that, but one of the things the Auditor General pointed to is actually something that we've been working on, which is constructing a better measure to explain what's going on to everyone. It's not always possible to trace from an individual audit what happened and calculate it at the end of the day, but we do have some figures that we can use to make generalizations about how much we might expect to lose in a court case.
We're doing those calculations now. I think the Auditor General was right to say that it's incomplete information. We're looking to make it complete. There will have to be assumptions made in that process, but I think we can provide a more complete picture of that whole spectrum from audit through to appeals, court cases and collections.
Ted is in the middle of all this. Maybe I'll ask if he wants to elaborate.