Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Mr. Chairman, I don't have any further update on that. That would be a question for government. Government would be setting those funds aside. Monsieur Roy might be able to help with that.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yes, this is what we observed. Clearly the government set an objective to have those treaties negotiated by the year 2000. So they need a more realistic plan. One thing, Mr. Chairman, that your committee might want to consider and that Monsieur Roy has talked about is the action plan the department is working on.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Mr. Chair, we haven't analyzed those cases to assess lessons learned or what the good practices might have been, but I think a point worth making, and I know that the department made this, too, during the course of the audit, is that there's a lot of work in progress, if you like.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  No, Mr. Chairman, we wouldn't say that. Nor would we be in a position to say it. What we're saying is that those fundamental differences affect to some degree, and possibly to varying degrees, the negotiations that are taking place in the process. But we didn't do the type of analysis that would determine the extent to which they would have affected one negotiation more or less than another.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I want to ask Mr. Berthelette to comment on the issue of the small nations, the negotiations thereof. In response to the comment about the recommendations, I would agree that the recommendations we have are recommendations to the government on the process.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes. I think Mr. Berthelette will have that information.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Mr. Chairman, let me respond on behalf of the Auditor General on the issue of the duty to consult. That analysis at the time we conducted the audit had not been done, and certainly it's something that we felt should be done that would have an important impact going forward.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Good day, Mr. Chair. It is a pleasure to be here today to discuss our audit of the British Columbia treaty process. With me today is Mr. Jérôme Berthelette, Principal. The objective of our audit was to assess the federal government's management of its participation in the BC treaty process.

Public Accounts committee  There are two main issues in the audit. The information was materially wrong, and we believe Public Works should have acted on the warnings that came up.

Public Accounts committee  I'd just repeat, Mr. Chairman, that we easily accessed the actual information during the audit.

Public Accounts committee  I think there are two issues. It was a personalized amount, but the companies bid a ceiling price on it. So some prices they bid were prices directly to the Crown and some were prices that were going to be paid by members. In this case, the bid was zero.

Public Accounts committee  There are two things, Mr. Chairman. Yes, the bidders were asked to bid a price for those services, even though those particular services were to be paid out of the personalized amount of the individuals. Our understanding was that this was a ceiling price, which would protect the individual members, in terms of the prices they would be charged.

Public Accounts committee  There was a personalized amount for each individual, but in each of the cases there was a ceiling price bid. That was the limit the individual would be expected to pay.

Public Accounts committee  That's right.

Public Accounts committee  That's correct.