Unfortunately, the backlog is kind of like an iceberg growing. It grows very slowly, but it grows imperceptibly over years, and once you have it, it's hard to get rid of.
The backlog grew over the last few years when there were great administrative challenges at the Office of the Privacy Commissioner. For years, up until now, we have never had a full complement of investigators for various reasons. One was that we couldn't get financing for more investigators until we put our house in order, and that took several years, as you'll remember. A second was that we got the financing for new investigators, but then we were in this turnover mode largely due to the rarity of investigators as a specialized occupational group in the very specific Ottawa labour market. This was combined with the issue of retirement in a certain cohort of people.
However, this fall we have been able to hire 20 investigators as a group, and I think we have a complement of about 42 investigators. We have a whole influx of new people that are being trained in January and February and will start working mid-March. The backlog grew in the past, but I think now, with a full complement of human resources, we can go ahead in the future and attack it successfully.