Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I thank our witnesses for being here today and for their very informative presentation. You've helped us understand, at least to a small degree, some of the complexities that you deal with, especially when you referred to the national security issues in section 13 and section 15. That's been helpful to me.
The disappointing part for me is that all too often there are innuendoes that somehow there's some ministerial or political interference in these ATIP requests and the responses that are given. If you're stating categorically today that you have never seen evidence of inappropriate ministerial involvement in the release of information, nor has any such involvement been brought to your attention, I think this is really helpful in dispelling some of the myths that are often propagated by political opportunism. Unfortunately, we've seen a couple of examples of that today. I was only going to say one example, but since then we've had a few others.
I want to come back to some statements you made in your report here--the one comment you made about the 78% increase in requests. That's phenomenal. We talk about inflation and having to live within our means. It's hard for me to understand how any department could possibly grapple with an increase of 78%. The Department of the Environment also indicated similar challenges.
On the next page you talk about the fact that you're hiring an increased number of ATIP consultants. I'm wondering, what is your source for these specialists? Are you stealing from other departments, or is there some stream of new consultants that are available to you?