Public Accounts committee  We will look at the Swedish lab. When we talk about the $5 million, it's in addition to the money that's already there. Within national police services, it incorporates a lot of services within the RCMP. My budget is around $400 million, so within the various programs I'm responsible for, we are taking funds from lower-priority items and also putting them into the lab.

Public Accounts committee  We have to be careful here. The Auditor General also pointed out that you can't solve all of this with money. There is a process issue involved here, and whether or not we have an efficient work flow. We're not just throwing money at a problem. We are going to be hiring people; we have a capacity gap.

Public Accounts committee  Are you talking about the quality control issue now?

Public Accounts committee  We'll let the scientists speak to that one.

Public Accounts committee  We're taking a very different approach. Just to add to what the commissioner said earlier on about if we have enough resources, the answer may be no, if we have extra service demands during that consultation process. But this program is the number one priority in national police services, and the resources will be made available if that happens.

Public Accounts committee  I have not looked at those, but I would pass that on to Mr. Buckle to respond.

Public Accounts committee  That predates me. I'd have to ask Mr. Buckle to speak to that.

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Christopherson, one of these comments was or is attributed to me. Clearly, murder cases, cases with violence, violent assaults, those kinds of things would definitely go right into the priority queue and be handled right away. That is my statement. When I appeared before this committee—I appeared once before on the FLS issue—there was a request about the explanation for the negotiation process.

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Laforest, the answer is yes. I think that we've already demonstrated.... I was going to go back and talk about some of the other audits. I think we have missed the boat on some of this. But when you start talking about it, it sounds very “excusey”. I think the real answer is yes, we are serious about this.

Public Accounts committee  The Centre of Forensic Sciences in Ontario is set up to look after the Ontario police forces, and there is a similar set-up in Quebec. I'm not aware of their accepting case work from outside. Joe, do you have anything?

Public Accounts committee  We are in the process of doing so. We have not hired them yet. We are in a recruiting phase. They'll be made up of some support staff, but mainly biologists. While we can go to a university and hire some very bright minds in the scientific field, the educational facilities do not teach DNA forensic science.

Public Accounts committee  I'll let Mr. Buckle take that question.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you, Commissioner. We do have the financial resources. We have just reprofiled $5 million into the FLS budget, and those funds are going to be used to bring the Edmonton facility up to a standard where it can take on DNA analysis and hire the additional 70 people. Regarding the turnaround time and the backlog, I think what the Auditor General is telling us is that we're too slow; we need to be quicker.

Public Accounts committee  The other point regarding the timing is that we are still maintaining the 15-day urgent-case grouping, so we will have that. We also accept urgent, unusual requests. So if an agency has something that they would like us to process faster, we will do that. However, when you're talking about the DNA science—and I've got to be careful here—it does take time to run that.