Public Accounts committee  That would be a question for Passport Canada to ponder, but generally speaking, because of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, it is conceivable that five million passports could be issued in the future. That is only an estimate. I will let my colleague answer the question

Public Accounts committee  I will defer to a man more expert than I: Mr. Crosbie.

Public Accounts committee  I agree with that. We did indeed talk about it. As I said earlier, when we made our original erroneous calculations showing us in a deficit position over three years, we did not move to increase the fee because we wanted to see whether or not there was a reasonable trend. I thi

Public Accounts committee  I have a couple observations, sir. We don't run it like an insurance fund precisely. Conceptually we offer a service in response to a fee that is given. We don't have actuarial analysis in terms of the costs that are borne and the trends that are going on. I think we do have

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Sweet, on your first point, I think you're bang on. I think we have two issues that we have to resolve quickly. One is the time period over which we examine the fees and charges to see how much accumulated surplus or deficit we should take into account before we recommend to

Public Accounts committee  We're not aware of it, but I can get that information and report it back to you.

Public Accounts committee  I'm not sure that there's an inconsistency between the Auditor General's view and ours. I think, generally speaking, that the Auditor General said that we're not properly applying the right deductions to the gross charges to bring down to a net charge the amounts that are properl

Public Accounts committee  I would defer somewhat to my colleague from the Auditor General, but I think you see two sets of calculations there. I believe the Auditor General has agreed with the calculations we made but has made the point that we should take steps to make some enhancements to our performanc

Public Accounts committee  There are a couple of things. On the volume increases for passports, obviously as the number of passports in circulation goes up, the amount of revenue goes up, but so does the burden on the consular program, because while not everybody who gets a passport travels extensively,

Public Accounts committee  I would ask my colleague, Mr. Crosbie, to comment on that.

Public Accounts committee  Initially, the insurance program was described as a concept for formulating principles on which fees would be established. In most cases, when a Canadian receives a passport, there is no guarantee that he will turn to consular services for assistance. So in some cases you're goi

Public Accounts committee  We have signed off on the report.

Public Accounts committee  No, no. Let me just clarify my answer. We have signed off on the report; we're not debating these numbers at all. There are a few questions, in my mind, as I examine our action plan, as to what costs should be appropriately billed to the consular services fee as we go forward a

Public Accounts committee  Generally speaking, the services that are appropriately billable to the consular services fee are true consular services provided by our staff abroad. Those would be the sorts of things I've described in terms of assistance to Canadians abroad in cases of disaster or crime, or si

Public Accounts committee  On the basis of the information that we have in this report?