Finance committee  Yes. Under a number of trade agreements that Canada entered into, we allowed other countries to bid for federal government contracts, for instance, and under NAFTA and under the internal trade agreement, we established a regime to make sure that companies in one province would no

Finance committee  The tribunal is an independent quasi-judicial body. It reports to the House through the Minister of Finance. There's an adversarial process. On one side you'll have Public Works or some other department, and on the other hand you'll have the agency or the company that's complaini

Finance committee  Well, a little bit like Mr. Potter, we have prepared the plans and priorities. It's not yet published. It will be published in the next few weeks, but it's a timing issue, and then you would have had all the information that we could make available. Also, we do provide copies of

Finance committee  We submit it, and Treasury Board may edit it.

Finance committee  By “its activities”, I take it that you are talking about our inquiries. We use, essentially, in-house staff to do that. If we have a request from the government, or if we have a case that requires an expertise that we don't have, then we go outside, but that's rather unusual. In

Finance committee  Mr. Chairman.

Finance committee  We are in the process of preparing our report on plans and priorities, which goes into great detail on what the tribunal plans to do in the coming fiscal year. The time for that has not yet arrived because the fiscal year is not finished yet, so we can't roll up all the data, but

Finance committee  In the opening statement, sir, I explained.... Pardon?

Finance committee  I will give you a copy of the estimates we provided to Treasury Board.

Finance committee  First of all, somebody has to come knocking at our door, and to date no one has. If the question is to be put, it really has to be put to the Minister of Finance or the Minister of International Trade as to whether or not they want to take action. Industry groups, producer grou

Finance committee  I'm sorry, I--

Finance committee  Once last year, and once before the finance committee.

Finance committee  Yes, but also we appeared before the international trade committee to talk about our program.

Finance committee  The committee certainly has not asked us to produce any paper other than the estimate request. When we appeared last year, we produced our annual report and a number of other explanations of how the tribunal functions. Frankly, I didn't realize this was something the committee

Finance committee  We've had instances in which trade unions or consumer organizations have appeared before us on one side or the other of the issues, and that's fine. We can easily do that. What they can't do is bring the case themselves, unless they are representing the industry.