Public Accounts committee  Yes, that is in fact the case.

Public Accounts committee  I want to be clear. The centre of expertise, which we set up in September 2006, is run at the director level. It's chaired by the director of financial management, with one of our legal advisers and others in the program in financial management. What it does is provide the first level of oversight.

Public Accounts committee  Yes, the ADM-level committee is the transfer payment review committee—

Public Accounts committee  No, it's a different committee. I apologize; it's a different committee. That committee deals with any contract over $1 million or any contract that's referred to it by the centre of excellence as constituting a higher level of risk.

Public Accounts committee  Yes.

Public Accounts committee  I would say that in one case it could pertain to the potential recipient of a contribution agreement. One thing we Identified through the internal audit back in 2006 is that wherever there is evidence that a company has been set up for the express and singular purpose of receiving a contribution agreement from NRCan, that would certainly be a risk that would be referred to the transfer review committee.

Public Accounts committee  I am not aware of its happening.

Public Accounts committee  I will just say that all of the work in that particular area under the responsibility of that program director was certainly subject to increased scrutiny as a result of the situations that arose, starting back in 2005 with the recipient audit, but I want to clarify one thing. The internal audit was one action taken at the time this situation was brought to the attention of the deputy and the executive of the department.

Public Accounts committee  If I may, Mr. Chair, if you look at the internal audit, it's only one piece. It was a very important piece, but there was also a labour relations side resulting in significant consequence to the conflict of interest in the termination of employment. I don't want to leave you the impression that because it wasn't stated in the internal audit....

Public Accounts committee  Well, I'm not sure whether it's appropriate, but there are other actions available to a deputy minister. One is internal audit; another is through the labour relations front to resolve issues that we think involve a significant failure of management.

Public Accounts committee  Can I get back to you with a specific number?

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, I didn't in any way intend to give you the impression that we are not aware. As a deputy minister with a department of over 5,000 people, I just was not able to specify the number. I would say that there are dozens of individual officials who are responsible for administering contribution agreements.

Public Accounts committee  Yes, thank you very much. I'd be happy to. I want to clarify one thing. At the time this situation was under review with the internal audit, there was a recognition that there was a potential for conflict of interest, so one thing that was driving us in the department was to assess whether there had been wrongdoing, first of all from a criminal perspective.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you for your question. To be specific, the department is currently aware of one potential conflict of interest situation. As the review or investigation of that situation is under way right now, it's not possible for me to disclose the individual's name, and it would also not be appropriate under the Privacy Act, but we are aware of one other potential conflict of interest situation within our department.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you for that question. The management mechanism we have available to us is primarily our internal audit. The very first request was to a consulting company within the Government of Canada, Consulting and Audit Canada, to do a review of the compliance audit on this contribution agreement, but internal audit is the management mechanism by which a deputy minister would ask for a review when any kind of risk situation is being presented.