Government Operations committee  Certainly. If you turn to exhibit 1.2, at the back of the report, we list the departments and the 13 fees—

Government Operations committee  —and they are mentioned as to whether they met the criteria of having the systems and practices. So it is fairly clear in the report.

Government Operations committee  Thank you. We do note, of course, that some departments did know the costs, and we did cite Parks Canada, for example, as having good costing information, and using that information in establishing the fees. Others, for various reasons, and I don't think there's any one reason, in many cases I think believe that the fees are established on a basis other than cost, and the costs are so high it's not worth pursuing the cost.

Finance committee  No, Mr. Chair. I don't know how to respond to that.

Finance committee  Yes, Mr. Chair, although I believe there was a required legislative review done of the bill anyway, and we did the audit in advance of that. Certainly, it's my view that you're trying to deal with the issues and that's the reason the bill is here.

Finance committee  Mr. Chair, certainly the member is right that this is an issue we raised in our chapter in our audit in 2004, and we do confirm, as I said in the opening statement, that this exemption has been reconfirmed with this legislation. We do understand, although we don't know all the details, of the discussions or negotiations between the government and the law societies on putting in something that would complement or substitute for that requirement, so I can't comment on it.

Finance committee  Mr. Chair, I think they did know about the European examples before. I think the issue, as I mentioned, is that the lawyers obtained a successful legal challenge, and that was the original rationale for their being exempted. I suspect that may have been a factor in the discussions about continuing that exemption.

Finance committee  I think it would be difficult for me to comment without having done additional work. That would require follow-up audit work to see whether it will be effective. But as I've said in my opening statement, we do believe it goes in the direction of providing FINTRAC the ability to provide additional information, which should respond to the issue that we saw or were told at the time of our audit, that they weren't getting the kind of information that would allow them to pursue the investigations.

Finance committee  There isn't one. We would obviously take into account that a period of time would be necessary after the legislation was in place to have some effective period before we would consider, and of course interest expressed by committees of Parliament and so on might have some influence.

Finance committee  Mr. Chair, I said that the bill does address that particular issue. The issue you're alluding to is one we raised at the time of our audit. And as I've indicated in point number 12 of my statement, the bill does appear to address that particular issue, to require registration, so from our perspective the matter has been addressed.

Finance committee  Mr. Chair, I would certainly agree that the audit, as I pointed out, was done two years ago. We haven't followed up on this audit, so I don't know—

Finance committee  It's going to change, yes. The issue, as I pointed out, is that it appears it would address the issue of what could be disclosed so that it would be more than tombstone data. As we pointed out, we recommended that it be looked at in terms of what additional information could be disclosed while respecting the issues of privacy.

Finance committee  It would appear that it gives more latitude to FINTRAC to disclose more information that would provide the context of the basis of their determinations.

Finance committee  No, we have not studied the bill in detail from the point of view of amendments. We would come back to do follow-up—

Finance committee  As I said, it appears to address the issues, and it's now a policy choice as to whether those decisions are appropriate.