Information & Ethics committee  My annual reports contain many examples of matters involving the government, but the reports often appear 18 months after the events have taken place. A very common example, one that concerns me a great deal, is the security of personal information within the government. We know

Information & Ethics committee  The total complement for our office, starting in this fiscal year, is 178.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, but we're significantly over what we used to be, so in our world we think we've made appreciable gains.

Information & Ethics committee  That was over the whole year. At the end of the fall we hired...some were internal promotions. We had 15 new investigators, and then five over the year. We were able to provide them with consistent and comprehensive training.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes. A lot of the turnover in the past and a lot of our historic challenges that have led to the unfortunate creation of a backlog in our complaint investigation are due to the tremendous demand within the public service, particularly in the national capital region, for investiga

Information & Ethics committee  Generally it takes a university degree or the equivalent--writing skills, analytical capacity--

Information & Ethics committee  I believe we ask that it be related to the work, and in fact we currently have people with a range of skills, which is very important. Some are in criminology. People in information technology are extremely important now. So I think there can be a range of backgrounds, because we

Information & Ethics committee  Yes. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It's a pleasure to be back here again at our committee. I have an opening statement of about 10 minutes, and then Mr. Pulcine and I will be pleased to answer your questions on the main estimates. I'd like to begin by talking about the cons

Public Safety committee  I think my colleague has some thoughts on that.

Public Safety committee  I have not seen all the recommendations from the O'Connor inquiry implemented, some of which had to do with a committee that I don't believe is in existence.

Public Safety committee  I would simply say that we do have ongoing complaints against many organizations with national security mandates, but I do not know...and the nature of our regime is that I can't speak of the contents publicly. Certainly we have complaints on an ongoing basis against many of the

Public Safety committee  Yes, absolutely.

Public Safety committee  Yes. I don't disagree with that. I can't prejudge what Mr. Justice Major may be saying in his report; however, I did find very instructive the recent report of the Auditor General, which I think is very illuminating on this question and which highlighted the need for intelligen

Public Safety committee  Okay.

Public Safety committee  Yes, thank you. Mr. Chairman, my office isn't really equipped to evaluate the cost of these various recommendations. I believe the Treasury Board is. Perhaps the point I could make to this committee is that the opportunity costs are the important factor to look at. If we had i