Procedure and House Affairs committee  Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. I am pleased to be here today to participate in your study of Bill C-50, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act (political financing). I am accompanied by Bruce Bergen, senior counsel. As Commissioner of Lobbying, my ro

Information & Ethics committee  I can't provide an exact number. It really depends on the complexity of the investigation or review. Sometimes, the availability of the people we want to interview affects the length of the investigation. For an investigation, two things must be considered. In a conduct case, I

Information & Ethics committee  Thank you.

Information & Ethics committee  The City of Toronto has had it working quite well. Prior to 2004, the two offices were together, but there was a court case that found that because the two roles were under one regime, there was institutional bias, so in merging them, that's something that would have to be looked

Information & Ethics committee  I think there are many figures.

Information & Ethics committee  I opened 173 administrative review cases and sent 14 cases to the RCMP. I also sent 10 investigation reports to Parliament regarding people who breached the Lobbyists' Code of Conduct. I think about 73 exemption requests were made. Sorry, I meant 79 exemption requests.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, I may conduct more verifications. If the budget were higher, I could conduct many more outreach activities. At this time, I always need to choose between activities, investigations and the development of the registry. The new person appointed commissioner will need to look

Information & Ethics committee  Yes.

Information & Ethics committee  In English, we refer to full-time equivalent employees, or FTEs. The outreach activities, for example, take up much of my time. It's not as if I have seven employees. I'm so proud and fortunate that I can rely on my team. I have only one senior communications officer. That's wh

Information & Ethics committee  On educating and monitoring, if I'm looking at the fines, there is nothing in between. Even my colleagues in the provinces, as I mentioned, have a maximum of I believe up to $25,000. Then there are penalties that would still go to the courts. So it would not be replacing it. Th

Information & Ethics committee  It's anything that's brought to my attention. Media monitoring is is done on a daily basis to see where there have been references to lobbying. Further analysis is then done to determine whether it is provincial or federal...because sometimes the word can be used quite loosely if

Information & Ethics committee  Do you mean to look into a matter? No, I can open something, but as I was mentioning before, it has the continuum going through. When an allegation is brought to my attention, whether through media monitoring or complaints or some other means, the first thing that is done by the

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, they are, senior investigators.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes.

Information & Ethics committee  I just want to be clear. I said I'm looking into all of the matters. I haven't confirmed what the status any of the files I'm looking at might have.