Public Accounts committee  In the case of North Bay, I would like to be able to satisfy the member, Mr. Chairman, but he, I think, has pretty much stated the reality. Those blueprints were not classified. In retrospect, if we had to do it again, we would probably be a little bit more deliberate, certainly through the application of a security requirements checklist, and may very well have come up with a different classification for those plans.

Public Accounts committee  Well, whenever blueprints are classified, the available number of contractors is smaller by a significant margin because of the required security clearances. I don't know, I'd have to go back to those who were there at the time to understand exactly why. I don't know that that was the major reason, but there is no question--and Scott or the DSO may want to speak to this--that we missed the classification of those blueprints.

Public Accounts committee  With the advantage of hindsight, Mr. Chairman, I think the bottom line is this: I think the Auditor General reported that if we had that decision to take again, we would have done a security requirements checklist on that project and those blueprints likely would have been classified.

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chairman, we submitted a revised action plan to you and the committee last Wednesday or Thursday; I'm not actually sure of the date. At that time we identified that we expected this MOU and the framework to be signed by July 31, 2008. As we went through our work last week, we realized it was further ahead than we thought.

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chairman, let me just repeat that there was no breach of government security policy or national security policy in the handling of these documents. The project itself went through a security requirements checklist. It was not deemed necessary to classify the actual blueprints.

Public Accounts committee  First of all, we have tabled an action plan. I believe we have a revised action plan to actually table. The action plan itself is based on all the recommendations the Auditor General herself put forward in her report. Basically, there are four points to that action plan. Just before I get back to them, I would like to say that the reality, which the Auditor General has recognized, is that the way most of our buildings work their way through the classification process is that, first, a function for the building is actually determined.

Public Accounts committee  No, we were not informed that the blueprints had disappeared, Mr. Chairman.

Public Accounts committee  Do we know...?

Public Accounts committee  No, we do not know how they ended up there.

Public Accounts committee  Yes, absolutely.

Public Accounts committee  There was no flaw in the process. The process required us to look at whether or not those blueprints should have been classified. A determination was made that they did not have to be classified, the contractors would not require access to classified information, or access to classified areas.

Public Accounts committee  Is there some way of avoiding this in place? I'd have to look at my departmental security officer. I do not believe we have moved to change the provisions that are there. We are awaiting Treasury Board guidance in the rewriting of the government security policy around the issue of whether there will be special handling provisions for unclassified blueprints associated with government buildings.

Public Accounts committee  I think shortly after the discovery of the Trenton blueprints somebody managed to find some blueprints for another government department's buildings, which were also unclassified, in a similar situation. So could it recur for unclassified documents? Unless we have put certain provisions into the contract for the handling of unclassified documents, it would be above and beyond the provisions in the government security policy.

Public Accounts committee  The Trenton project and the development of the blueprints went through the appropriate kind of security requirements checklist. Those blueprints were deemed to be unclassified. Treasury Board, under the government security policy, now recognizes that there are no document-handling requirements for unclassified blueprints.

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, thank you for this opportunity to speak with you today. First, I would like to apologize to the committee for any misunderstanding that the testimony given by representatives of the Department of National Defence in February may have caused.