Public Accounts committee  May I continue? You have a good question.

Public Accounts committee  Then what happened is that all of a sudden we get a bill from Great-West Life to pay them. So we say we can't pay them, because we can't pay them out of the pension. It doesn't make sense that you can charge insurance to pension.

Public Accounts committee  So then immediately we went back to Great-West Life and said, look, you have to give us a refund of this money. After they gave us a refund, we credited the pension fund, as we should, and then they charged it to the premiums. The argument here between Mr. Frizzell and us is whether or not we can charge administration of insurance to the RCMP appropriations, and what I said is that we don't have that authority.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you, that is a good question. I would like to answer in English, if you do not mind, because that would be easier for me. That's exactly what happened. The Auditor General has said that, the internal audit has said that, and so has the Ottawa Police Service investigation--that $3.4 million was charged to the pension fund that should not have been charged there.

Public Accounts committee  Well, I think two people who, in their testimony, have been quite vocal about it are Mr. Lewis and Mr. Gork.

Public Accounts committee  I don't want to speculate, sir. I do not know. It is possible, but I do not know.

Public Accounts committee  I can't say who gave the instruction, but this project was being done within the human resources area. In the RCMP, contrary to what many people may believe, we are very restricted to the Financial Administration Act, like any other department. We do training, we train managers, etc.

Public Accounts committee  Well, it wasn't for me to make that decision, sir. He didn't work for me.

Public Accounts committee  I'm sorry, I can't answer it. This is a human resources issue. I'm a financial person and I don't make recommendations on who gets fired and who doesn't.

Public Accounts committee  Well, we certainly had problems on the contracting side and we took his authority away, yes.

Public Accounts committee  Yes, that's what I said. If you go back and read over the testimony that you had from certain people who appeared before these committees, it's quite obvious that civilians are not welcome in the force at senior levels. In fact--

Public Accounts committee  I'm sorry, it was a $200,000 refund. We are still discussing the balance, and we are still arguing. We have exchanged a number of letters where they say that 70% of their files were clean and therefore they gave us back one-third. We're saying we want the whole thing back.

Public Accounts committee  No, I haven't, but if that's an issue, I will be pleased to do so. I don't think anybody else has either, because that golf game--we didn't know that was charged to the room or to the pension fund.

Public Accounts committee  There's one name that has been mentioned here in the committee already, and I believe it is Frank Brazeau.

Public Accounts committee  As I mentioned, the individual responsible for this project--and he has been before the committee--was Dominic Crupi. So between him and a couple of his officers, there definitely was collusion with CAC.