Thank you very much for coming.
I have a very great interest. I want to let you know, to let all your departments know, that I worked for 30 years for another civil service, and I know that all civil servants do the best they can with what they're presented.
My history is 30 years as an Ontario Provincial Police officer, so I did work under the old FAC system, which I'll refrain from commenting on, except to say that under that system, which I believe was originally created by the then Justice Minister Campbell, and knowing how that system operated, we would know probably within a very short period of time.... All those who had firearms acquisition certificates would, when they acquired a firearm, have to register that firearm. So that information at one time was all with the federal government, and some day I'd like to find out what happened to that. I have a suspicion--and it wouldn't have cost a billion dollars.
Going back to some of the questions in regard to the $39 million, the special report of the Auditor General stated that the Department of Justice officials could not provide documentation showing any analysis or process by which the decision was made to report the $39 million in liability relating to the CFIS II, and government decisions limited Parliament's control of public spending in paragraph 25.
I have a couple of quick questions on that. Was there simply no documentation, or has this been misplaced? Secondly, how specifically were decisions made to report or not report the $39 million?
I note that Mr. Ganim, from the Department of Justice, is here and may be able to better lend some answers to those two questions.