Information & Ethics committee  It is cumulative and takes into account all of the employees.

Information & Ethics committee  I assure you that we will examine it. That is my commitment.

Information & Ethics committee  We don't require a summary of the discussion. What we need from you is straightforward. All you need to do is verify some information, including the date, the names of the individuals present, and the topic of conversation. That means a list of the issues discussed, not a summary of what was said.

Information & Ethics committee  My pleasure.

Information & Ethics committee  The funding we are seeking is simply to keep the registry modern and effective. You know how technology works. The registry is 10 years old. It constantly has to be updated. If legislative changes are made, certain aspects of the registry will change, and that, too, will require resources.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes.

Information & Ethics committee  As I said earlier, I need to start with lobbyists. I also need to reach out to public officer holders and designated public office holders so that they understand their role when a lobbyist comes in. We're planning to do webinars, and I'm really hoping that with Commissioner Dion we can reach out to Canadians.

Information & Ethics committee  My first comment will be that the rule does not make a lot of sense. I think that former public officer holders need to be careful, when they go back to working outside government, that they don't take advantage of information or contacts they've obtained to then further their own private interests or that of the company.

Information & Ethics committee  Right now, I can only regulate lobbyists. You are correct that there is no prohibition, but I can't really comment on that.

Information & Ethics committee  I believe it will be a normal trend. We're preparing for the annual report right now. I don't know if you can answer that. Has there been an increase? I think the number of registrants is steady now.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes.

Information & Ethics committee  In the annual report, it will again be at close to 94% accuracy. We verified the accuracy through reaching out to public office holders to let us know. We take about 5% of the monthly reports and we make a request. The inaccuracy is where they write down that a person was there and in fact they weren't, or it's a misspelling of a name, or there was an issue discussed and it's not on the list.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, absolutely.

Information & Ethics committee  Has it been resolved? No. Back in 2012, because of the reduction exercise, 5% was given back, and now we're continuing to survive with less money to play around with. I don't mean playing; I mean, to transfer into the registry. The registry is our main tool. What we've been doing since 2014 is maintain it.

Information & Ethics committee  The significant part of duties is a threshold for in-house lobbyists. Historically it's been interpreted quantitatively, rather than qualitatively because when you read “significant part of the duties”, you could think that “significant” also means the importance of the issue for them, but historically it's always been calculated in time.