Mr. Speaker, with regard to (a), to the extent that the information that has been requested is protected by solicitor-client privilege, the federal Crown asserts that privilege and, in this case, has waived that privilege only to the extent of revealing the total legal cost.
The amount billed by the Department of Justice is $964,575.94 for all matters related to the Piot case and $285,281.04 for all matters related to the Schnurr case. For clarity, the amount billed is for time for departmental lawyers, notaries and paralegals as well as the time of legal advisers in the legal service unit who provide advice to the client. All are salaried public servants, and therefore no external legal costs were incurred.
With regard to (b) and (c), no outside law firms were retained by the government with respect to these cases.