Public Accounts committee  Thank you. Mr. Chair, thank you for the opportunity to present results of chapter 7 of our May 2006 status report, “Acquisition of Leased Office Space”. I'm accompanied by Bruce Sloan, principal, who is responsible for this audit. PWGSC manages 6.6 million square metres of rental space and spends $3 billion annually to manage real property.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. When we did the original audit work, I think the information came as a surprise to the department. At that time, they were doing no analysis. They didn't know why. They didn't know the numbers were there. They had the information in the databases, but they hadn't done the analysis.

Public Accounts committee  Yes, Mr. Chairman, thank you. I think there's a couple of things that are important to clarify in relation to the follow-up we had wanted the department to do. And Madam Gosselin is correct. The department has done an awful lot and there has been satisfactory progress on a number of issues, and we recognize that.

Public Accounts committee  In that particular case, it's a situation where they're not yet able to demonstrate the results. We saw the results in previous audits. When they stopped doing it, those numbers changed. Now that they've restarted doing it, they haven't yet been able to demonstrate to us the effects.