Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The terms of reference were designed to look into the allegations made by the contractor about the treatment of the contractor by the staff of the Department of Social Services. The terms of reference for this investigation were designed to avoid a situation casting blame, or the intention of casting blame. It was intended to look into the circumstances behind the terminating of the contract to see if the termination was justified. In looking at the termination of the contract though, it was always the intention that the investigator would look into the quality of the care of the children, the quality of the supervising of the administration of the group home. You'll see in the elements of these terms of reference that there is reference to doing interviews of people in the community and organizations in the community to do just those things; to find out how effective the care of the children was by talking to the children, by talking to people in the community who are aware of the care that was being provided and by talking to the contractor and the social workers.
At the same time, it was important for us to assess the quality of the administration of the contract. In other words, how effectively did the Department of Social Services fulfil its responsibility for administering this contract? Discussions about lack of case planning and those kinds of things have to be looked into because, again, they are serious allegations. The bottom line in the terminating of this contract was that it wasn't working. It was costing the government a lot of money in terms of the expenditure of public funds, and in that kind of situation it wasn't in the best interest to either the children or the contractor to continue. Now that questions have been raised about it, it's our view that the independent investigation by contacting these people who have been involved in administration, and in contact with the group home itself, we'll be in a position to provide insights that will allow a person, a third party, a disinterested third party, who hasn't been involved, to make a judgement about whether the Department of Social Services did the right thing. I think that through the interviews though, we are going to get the answers to the questions that were raised in the contractors letter of March 24. Thank you.