Government Operations committee  No, but could I just--

Government Operations committee  Could I make a clarification that you may want to check into? For us, in order to maintain our independence, we insisted that Public Works do the processing of our day-to-day financial payments.

Government Operations committee  But we pay them. It's not done for free. We want to be independent of them. It's on a cost recovery basis. We pay them for that. So to make comparisons with other offices, other ombudsman offices, you have to make sure that we're comparing apples with apples. We pay for our accom

Government Operations committee  Actually, it's not a lot where IT costs are concerned, but you have to remember that speed at which you're set up is where you get a lot of set-up costs. We had to get new wiring done. We had to buy all our equipment new. The government does this on a cash basis, of course, so al

Government Operations committee  Well, for 24 people you get 24 computers. You're not going to buy them every year, but you do have to get them in one year.

Government Operations committee  Let me say this, holding nothing back: absolutely not. Let me also say that that our view is that we wouldn't put up with any. Our other view is that I am being paid and my staff are being paid to influence the government and we want to make sure we influence them in a positive w

Government Operations committee  We're very encouraged by what we've heard today. I'm taking this as an endorsement of the way we do business. I'll pass that message back to the troops and I'm sure they'll be appreciative. Thank you so much.

Government Operations committee  There are 24 people.

Government Operations committee  Let me start by saying that in that budget you looked at, everybody realized that we were going to have a stump period; it was not a complete year by the time I was appointed and everybody else came in. So the budget was $3.2 million for that stump period; they knew that we'd onl

Government Operations committee  But we didn't get our people hired until September or October, so there was no point in having a lot of money that we weren't going to spend.

Government Operations committee  It's $4.1 million.

Government Operations committee  That's right.

Government Operations committee  We'll vary between 24 and 28, somewhere in that range, depending on the nature of the work we're doing. In some cases, we may bring in specialists for short terms. I think we're at a comfortable place now.

Government Operations committee  We wanted a system that would track complaints: when a complaint comes in, how many days it takes us to resolve the complaint, how long it takes us to do a practice review, and how long it takes us to do an ADR. We wanted to come back to you next year with some definite performan

Government Operations committee  That's Public Works' authority. But if you're doing the limited tendering or the traditional tendering, it would be $10 million. If you go out, do a market test, and do ACAN, it can be $40 million—