Mr. Chairman, I think the best way to answer the question--and it's the way we tend to approach it as well--is that it's easier when one looks at each specific institution to see either how they address an increase in volume of requests or how they handle a change of circumstances.
For instance, at DFAIT, one of the key components of their challenge is that their consultation requests are far higher in terms of volume than their actual requests for information. They get about 665 requests themselves, but they have to respond to over 1,000 consultations. I would suggest that probably their level of resourcing has not kept up with this demand.
The Treasury Board Secretariat obliges other departments to consult with the Department of Foreign Affairs, so in a way they have become a sort of central agency in matters of access to information. I would say in looking at that, for instance, that it's a good example of where the increase in workload has probably not been addressed by appropriate resourcing, so there hasn't been a correlation.
If, for instance, you look at another one—was it NRCan?—that has had a large turnover of staff in the last year or so, then you'll see that this will have an impact on its performance.
On the overall increase in the volume of requests, it hasn't gone from 20,000 to 30,000 in a year; it's basically a steady increase year over year. So I don't think that this in itself is a major problem. I think it's best to look at it institution by institution and how their own circumstances are being addressed.