Information & Ethics committee  They are happier, but again there are a couple of caveats. This is in contradistinction to the rather troubled history a while ago, which is well behind us, I think. Secondly, my office and the Office of the Information Commissioner, Mr. Marleau, are one reporting unit, so the answers are for double the reporting of a unit.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, that's a separate category of backlog, but I don't think it's as severe a backlog. We're dealing with privacy impact assessments also with organizations that we can phone up and say, “In the meantime, if we can't get to that, here's what you can do.” I believe there are about 20 of those assessments, and we have PIAs coming in from the public sector.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes. Following the time of the tabling of the bill and the bill going through Parliament, we were in touch with department and agency officials and gave them information on doing a PIA. We referred them to the Treasury Board website, where there's extensive information on doing that.

Information & Ethics committee  There are both types. They can change for a permanent job, and some can come for a year or two.

Information & Ethics committee  I'm sorry, the number of determinant and indeterminate employees...?

Information & Ethics committee  There are only two.

Information & Ethics committee  I did see that figure, because we monitor this closely. It seemed to me that there were to be no more than 10 in the next five years, far fewer than we think. One of the interesting things that happened since we had our last major discussion on human resources is that the average age of the office has gone down, because we are trying to reach out for a new demographic in terms of interest in what we do, in terms of knowledge and skills, and also to try to counteract these retirements.

Information & Ethics committee  We did, perhaps after discussion with your committee, because at one point we had the term “unassigned files” as the definition of backlog.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, we have what you would call a multi-pronged approach. The issue of hiring and retention has been a major focus of our human resources department. We've been looking into things such as training employees to make sure they know what they have to do, that they're clearly doing a good job and are happy in the workplace.

Information & Ethics committee  No, it's not helpful.

Information & Ethics committee  No, we're all competing for the same employees. It's not helpful at all.

Information & Ethics committee  I couldn't speak to that accurately off the top of my head. I would think almost—

Information & Ethics committee  Yes. A majority of them went to other jobs. A very small minority—

Information & Ethics committee  That's my understanding, that a majority did that. A very small minority retired.

Information & Ethics committee  It is.