Public Accounts committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. The way we did this work was that we looked at completed investigations. Our expectation was that these are members of the Canadian Armed Forces. They have to follow the DND and CF Code of Values and Ethics. They also have to follow the rules of the college.

Public Accounts committee  No, we did not.

Public Accounts committee  We did look at it from the perspective of updating our evidence from the 2002 and 2006 audits. We found that after those audits, there were programs put in place to increase the representation of aboriginal peoples to try to increase their representation. Those programs were quite successful, so at this point we have not continued to discuss those.

Public Accounts committee  I think that is an area that continues to be a bit of a struggle, trying to attract those people to the armed forces. I don't think it's an insurmountable problem as long as the programs are designed specifically for those groups.

Public Accounts committee  The current system is still in a state of development, because it is not integrated in the same way. In terms of the human resource side, along with the planned use, one of the difficulties is that if the equipment is not used the way it was planned to begin with, then you're left with contracts that were set up to use it in a different way.

Public Accounts committee  It's a work in progress. It is looking as though there is going to be progress, but we still have to see that.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you for the question. The best way to look at this is through the different parts of the defence resource management information system, some relate to personnel costs, some relate to inventory costs, all the way through. Within the planning side of it, when you're trying to do that life-cycle costing at the beginning, at the planning stage, you need to know how the equipment's going to be used, the planned use of the equipment.

Public Accounts committee  The only other thing I would add is that at the time those submarines were purchased, which is a considerable period of time ago, there wasn't a lot known as to how much it would cost. At the time the $35 million was put forward, it was based on an absence of information. As well, we were told that they had to build supply chains to be able to have the parts to do the in-depth maintenance that was needed and to develop the procedures.

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, in response to the specific question on the target versus the planning model, they are in fact two different things. What we're suggesting within the recommendation is that they have a three- to five-year target, so that within the variation, if they don't get the number they need within the current year, the next year they should be picking up what they didn't get the previous year, and filling in what they still need for the current year.

Public Accounts committee  I mean on the specific occupation, so that they manage it by occupation, whereas the five-year planning model that is mentioned within the response is more in terms of establishing the needs. The different environments—the navy, the air force, and the army—go through each occupation and figure out what they need, but in terms of actually making sure the target is met, we think there has to be a longer-term target to deal with the variations.

Public Accounts committee  —and also in the retention of pilots. Depending on what is happening externally in the marketplace, they may lose many of the pilots.

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, within the reports that National Defence provides to Parliament, in a departmental performance report they said that there was no requirement to actually provide this specific information, but since the information was there, we audited it to make sure that it was verifiable.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. It is very difficult to compare the construction costs from one country to another, especially from one shipyard to another. The costs of material and other elements vary greatly. The composition of workers and the travel involved also need to be taken into consideration.

Public Accounts committee  I think that question should be put to the department. Our audit focused on other considerations.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. In the 2008 audit, for the period we were looking at, which was back in 2004-05, so it is quite dated, there were approximately 2,000 cash bonds required for individuals. When we looked at them, approximately 300 had not been honoured. They found about half the people, which was about 170.