Mr. Chairman, the two I am thinking of right now are quite significant overages. It may be not simply the 10 percent that relates to the increase in the labour costs and material costs, but they also perhaps relate to a decrease in the amount of competition, or the fact that the contractors are that much busier and they are bidding even higher because they have a lot of work on the go right now. Some of those bids are in fact 30 to 50 percent over. Again, that is not the general rule. I just happen to know of two in particular that came in within that range.

Mr. Chairman, in the two instances I am thinking of, there are discussions going on right now with the clients to determine whether or not there are aspects of the project that can be deleted in order to reduce the costs. At the same time, the clients are exploring options for providing some additional funding for them. It is expected that both of those projects will go ahead, but it will be a somewhat reduced scope and some additional funding will be required.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yes, thus far we have been able to keep up with the inspection services. We do not have any significant backlog on that at the present time.

Agreed.

Agreed.

Mr. Chairman, there is a significant amount of work going on in the systems and communications side of business. The Knowledge Management Strategy is guiding the work. Some of the work will be improvements to the existing system. Some of it will be consolidating, so that we are not dealing with as many different types of systems. Some of those initiatives will significantly improve the efficiency of the way the systems operate.

The firewall project the Member mentioned is an exceedingly important part of the improvements to the systems at the present time. The firewalls are intended to protect the integrity of all of the systems and all of the communication networks that the government currently has in place. It is doing it by essentially constructing a wall around those systems and only allowing certain types of entry. There is much more controlled entry than there has been in the past.

That system was implemented a couple weeks ago now, and with anything as complex as this, there are always some difficulties and some things that were not foreseen in the original plan. We are currently working through those.

Most of those issues that have been raised with us are relatively easily dealt with. We are down to a very small number of problems that we are still trying to deal with. Many of the concerns that have been raised appear to be related to personal preference in terms of how the system is used, rather than a significant functional problem with the system.

We are confident that over the next few weeks, those bugs will be worked out and we will have a much more secure system in place to protect all of the government's communication and computer systems.

Mr. Chairman, there are legitimate reasons for others than government to connect with the government systems. It is what is termed virtual private network connections that can be made. It is essentially a license and a specific route to get into the government systems. We have issued approximately 40 of those at the present time.

Again, because we have good control over the systems, this allows us to understand who is using the system, what they are using it for and make sure they are secure when they are accessing the systems.

Agreed.