Finance committee  I'd just like to thank you, Mr. Chair, and the committee for inviting us to appear today. As we mentioned, we haven't done a lot of work on the specific authorities that were granted to the agency, but certainly what we've seen on the board of management and the audit committee, and on some of the other accountability provisions, has been positive.

Finance committee  Thank you.

Finance committee  I'm not really sure that we can comment on that. We did an audit on the audits of small and medium businesses. I'm not sure...that wasn't an issue that came up.

Finance committee  I think we did talk about the training of people, and the audit coverage, that they actually weren't, I think, doing all the audit coverage they had planned in many of the areas.

Finance committee  We don't have any specific amount, to my knowledge. In the 2002 report, I believe we mentioned that it amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars, but no specific figure was given. I don't know whether the agency has a more exact number for you.

Finance committee  As I said earlier, we are reluctant to suggest amendments to legislation. However, in 2002, we did indicate that the Department of Finance should analyze the impact of certain transactions, identified in our report, and see whether the act should be changed. I believe we will be reporting on an audit of issues relating to treaties and so on, next year.

Finance committee  That was over 10 years or so.

Finance committee  No, in total.

Finance committee  It's still far too early for that. We are in the beginning stages of the audit. The department may have some data for you, but we do not currently have any.

Finance committee  Unfortunately, we can't answer that question.

Finance committee  We will give you the answer next year.

Finance committee  We talked about hundreds of millions of dollars over a 10-year period, without giving any other details.

Finance committee  We said that it was tax revenue that was beyond the grasp of Canadian authorities.

Finance committee  We do a plan for three to five years. We do this for all the major departments and go through and look at what are the major risks, or the achievement of the department's or agency's objectives. Then we try to focus on the areas where we think the risk is highest. We have been largely focused in the last two years, as I mentioned, on the risk to the integrity of the system and how they manage that compliance activity.

Finance committee  I presume that would be up to parliamentarians to hold them to account for what they've said in their plan.