Public Accounts committee  Yes. So that was our point--not that the system had lost sight of 600,000 weapons.

Public Accounts committee  Yes.

Public Accounts committee  The words you have read, Mr. Chairman--

Public Accounts committee  The actual statement that half the registered firearms in the RWRS have not been re-registered is correct, but it's necessary to fully understand our critique of that. It's not that the system has lost visibility of these weapons; it's that the old database was quite inaccurate,

Public Safety committee  Mr. Chair, I don't think we pointed it out as a deficiency, but simply or as a matter of fact that it was discontinued. We suggested that the centre might have indicated, when it did so, the reasons for dropping it.

Public Safety committee  I believe it is. Those are gross numbers. Mr. Baker would be much better positioned than I am to talk about how his own database worked, but I believe that's correct, that there are a certain number of hits that are generated automatically through certain police inquiries.

Public Safety committee  I don't think in the grand scheme of things they are likely to change the overall cost of the program. Individual departments might go up and down, but in the end I think that changes to indirect costs are not likely to make a huge difference to anybody's opinion about the value

Public Safety committee  We've only come to the end of the audit and made a recommendation, so we haven't had any discussion since then.

Public Safety committee  Well, there's the so-called Guarnieri report, which you noted correctly, Mr. Chairman, is a cabinet confidence and, as such, was not accessible by us during the audit. So we can't speak any further to that particular report.

Public Safety committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The direct costs are those that are reimbursed, and the supporting departments have a strong notion of what those are: there was activity, they're billing the program for it, and they're being reimbursed. The indirect costs are ones for which there's no

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chairman, the officials would have been in both the Comptroller General's branch and the program branch.

Public Accounts committee  In my experience, I've never personally been asked by a department about an accounting issue. But I believe that sometimes it would come up through our central team, which deals with accounting matters.

Public Accounts committee  Let me add to this that we also didn't see any subsequent change in the government's application of its conclusions about this case to any other case. That once again tends to cloud the issue, from our point of view.

Public Accounts committee  Yes. In the second instance, the chronology is that the centre alerts their minister to the prospect of supplementary estimates because they see an overrun looming. After that, senior officials at the board, as well as at Public Safety, get involved, and there is a determination

Public Accounts committee  Yes.