National Defence committee  Sorting through boxes and boxes of paper files was a pretty inefficient way of finding information. With our investigations, the issue is sometimes a time issue and getting information from the department. We have to search through the information. Sometimes it's an issue of gett

National Defence committee  Certainly, as I said, we need to update and modernize our IT system, just as any IT system needs to be updated over time. The department, in our case, has zero access to the information we store on our IT servers. That's really important for the confidentiality principle that we

National Defence committee  For the ATIP process, we follow the law, in essence. We absolutely don't get as many ATIP requests as the whole department gets, but we follow the law. We're very good at getting the information for an ATIP request. We're actually pretty good, so it doesn't truly affect us. It do

National Defence committee  They've proposed cuts to our organization. We do have the ability, through the business planning process, to say what the impact would be. Generally, though, the decision on those cuts at the very end is not mine. The decision is the department's.

National Defence committee  It could be, yes. Generally, it's a contract for professional services. That could be hiring a team, as we have done, or an organization that would help with research, as we do right now. It could be something as simple as IT support. It could be a variety of things. It doesn't r

National Defence committee  No, we do not.

National Defence committee  For my purposes, we very rarely deal in classified information. Most of the information we deal with is “protected B” and that type of thing. That particular issue of having a way of declassifying information with regard to the Information Commissioner I don't think would affect

National Defence committee  I'll start first, if I may. The minister has not consulted with me on that particular legislation, so it's hard to say what exactly it is, though I may have some knowledge of perhaps what it could be. Certainly, he has not consulted with me on the issue of the independence of ou

National Defence committee  Yes. The document that we'll table with the committee has draft legislation for the independence of the office through legislation.

National Defence committee  It would be difficult to understand how it would be handled without having all the details. If it was a criminal matter, we would make sure that it got to the right place to deal with it, whether that's with the military police or whatever else. With that particular instance, wh

National Defence committee  There's likely a whole range of reasons why people are putting forward grievances or complaints in our case. Yes, absolutely, some of them have to do with leadership and the ability to resolve conflict in a workplace. That doesn't always means it's leadership. Sometimes it's with

National Defence committee  As I said, we're very effective in getting resolutions for people who come to us, but we can only really help people resolve an issue if they come to us, apart from some of the systemic investigations we do. On an individual basis, yes, we're very successful, but we always say

National Defence committee  The U.K. Service Complaints Ombudsman has the ability, in essence, to enforce certain recommendations—not all, but certain recommendations. That is one way of doing it. I think we've proven, with CAF in particular, that we were able to do it without that type of enforcement. I'm

National Defence committee  As I said in my opening remarks, when we're talking about individual investigations—when people come forward with a complaint or something—we are very successful in getting a resolution for them. I might have mentioned our statistic that we're 100% successful at this point in get

National Defence committee  In my experience—perhaps Robyn could supplement with her previous experience—I have not seen anything at this point that would suggest anything inappropriate in terms of interference in an individual complaint. Sometimes it takes a bit of time to get some information. Sometimes i