Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague for the great information he has given us, although I must admit that I heard the minister speaking earlier, when he appeared before the government operations committee that I am a member of, and at that time he informed us that there was $40 million spent. When we pursued how that money was spent, we were told that there were 20 million photocopies of information that had to be produced. Well, by my mathematics, that means that each piece of photocopied paper cost $2 a copy, which seems awfully excessive.
The other part that confuses me is why this war room needs someone like Ms. Menke, who is a former director of CSIS, to be the director. There are only four or five staff in that unit and apparently Ms. Menke is heading up that war room. I would like the member's opinion on that.
The minister mentioned that there were 20 million photocopies. By the way, these were all photocopied in the other departments. I am sure they were not copied in the PCO.
There is an article in the newspaper today that talks about lawyers for Jean Chrétien, Jean Pelletier and Alfonso Gagliano. The Gomery commission cost taxpayers more than a million dollars.
Let me just go through what it cost. Mr. Pelletier, the former Prime Minister's chief of staff, cost the public purse $382,000 between September 2004 and January 2005. We are talking about four months there, roughly. Mr. Chrétien's lawyer, from the same firm, cost $311,000 for services during the same period. Mr. Gagliano ran up a bill of $401,000. That is in excess of a million dollars. Now other bills, obtained through the access to information request made by CPAC, include $84,000 by lawyers for Chuck Guité. This money was spent to prepare the witnesses. How come there is supposed to be $40 million, along with the photocopies, that was spent preparing witnesses? I am confused. I wonder if the member could shed some light on that.