It's kind of like a report card. A very loooong report card that uses language such as "the RCMP has updated the PAA measures in the Expenditure Management Information System (EMIS) and is continuing to create opportunities to further harmonize with the MRRS policy."

The new crop of Departmental Performance Reports came out late last week. And while it takes an awful lot of caffeine to get through those long lists of performance goals and strategic outcomes, every once in a while something catches your eye.

Alison Crawford

This time it was the detail under the heading "Strategic Priority — Terrorism" that said the Mounties had "disrupted" a total of 13 terrorist targets in 2007-2008. Thirteen, eh? That seemed like a much larger number than had ever been previously reported.

Alas, it proved not to be quite the case.

A call to the RCMP media office turned up the fact that there was a typo in the report and that there were actually only seven "disruptions" in that period. Of the four cases the force would talk about, none of these alleged acts of terrorism occurred or was planned for Canada.

One involved two Spanish men wanted for separate sets of car bombings in Spain. One involved a man from Morocco, currently on trial in Montreal for conspiracy to build a detonate a bomb in Austria. And the other was the well-publicized case of Prapaharan Thambithurai, the first Canadian charged with raising money for a terror group, in this case the banned Tamil Tigers.

As for the others? No details.