Public Accounts committee  Some moneys were charged to the pension fund that really should have been charged to appropriations. The work was done. When you work with this, there is very little difference between pension, life insurance, and HR. So if you go to a conference, for example, and they talk about all three of them, where do you charge it?

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chairman, the amount identified was $1.3 million in the Auditor General's report. After further review, since we got the report, we have now actually either recouped or reimbursed $759,000. That leaves a balance of $373,000, which we are still looking at. A big part of that is an amount that was paid to Consulting and Audit Canada for consultants who worked on this particular project.

Public Accounts committee  Up until now, we have reimbursed $759,000 to the pension plan. That leaves a balance of $373,781.

Public Accounts committee  It is still being reviewed, but most of that amount represents funds that were paid to Public Works, to what is called Consulting and Audit Canada, for services provided to the pension plan administrators.

Public Accounts committee  Yes, that is correct.

Public Accounts committee  I have no information on that, sir.

Public Accounts committee  I can't answer how often, but I can say this was done by individuals without our knowledge. It came out after the investigation that some of this had been built into the room rate, but we were not aware of that when that happened.

Public Accounts committee  He asked me about Mr. Ewanovich. I don't know whether I can talk about him.

Public Accounts committee  I was not criminally charged, but I had to take a day of ethics, yes.

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chairman, this was not in my area of responsibility. It was under HR. It was under Mr. Ewanovich at the time. As I understand it after all these investigations, the reason they hired a consultant was that HR was overloaded and couldn't provide the service at the time. So the consultant was hired to provide staffing and classification services that normally would have been looked after within the organization.

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chairman, under the Privacy Act I'm not sure I can answer that. I'll rely on your judgment.

Public Safety committee  Over the last eight years the budget for the RCMP has increased from $1.8 billion to $3.3 billion this year in the estimates. We think that $3.3 billion will reach about $3.7 million because we have supplementary estimates (A) and (B). We're also working on our estimates for next year, and we think they will reach close to $4 billion.

Public Safety committee  We just had a memorandum to cabinet for the federal policing program. In that program we receive about 1,000 person years. Of that, about 700 are members and the rest are support staff. I think the government is still working on others in terms of putting more policemen on the street.