Public Accounts committee  Absolutely.

Public Accounts committee  I'm not entirely sure what part of the shared services agenda we're talking about. The agency is in the shared service cluster at the moment. We actually share an HR and financial management system with the Department of Agriculture. We are also involved in the corporate administrative shared services initiative that is being developed by the Treasury Board Secretariat, and we're participating in that with the notion that we would expand our shared base from two departments to more.

Public Accounts committee  We've done some pilots with hand-held equipment, particularly in the food inspection business, but we haven't fully developed the system to deal with that, and we haven't yet made the investment necessary to get us there.

Public Accounts committee  In terms of what we're doing in the short term around IM/IT, as I said earlier, we try to make investments in systems that have applicability across many programs, because that's the most efficient way to focus the resources, and specifically around applications that will support the plant program.

Public Accounts committee  Thanks for the question. I think the issue with the faxes is that the process is partly automated. So what happens when an import is coming into the country is there is an automated process, a handshake between the Canada Border Services Agency and CFIA. But the importer is required to provide information for the people in the import controls centre to assess the risk of the import coming in.

Public Accounts committee  Our annual spending on IM/IT has grown consistently as the agency's budget has grown. In 2008-09, the expenditure was $41 million, about 6.4% of the budget, which is about 3% more than it was ten years earlier. As the agency's budget has grown, the investment in IM/IT has grown with it.