Evidence of meeting #35 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was budget.
A recording is available from Parliament.
NDP
Commissioner of Lobbying, Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying
Yes, because we are not really dealing with cuts, but rather a restructuring.
NDP
The Chair NDP Pierre-Luc Dusseault
Unfortunately, Mr. Boulerice, your time is up. I am sorry to interrupt you.
I will now give the floor to Mr. Calkins, who has five minutes.
Conservative
Blaine Calkins Conservative Wetaskiwin, AB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Madam Shepherd, for your presentation today.
I'm just going to ask some questions, and hopefully you can enlighten me.
Your office is housed where?
Commissioner of Lobbying, Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying
We're at 255 Albert Street.
Conservative
Blaine Calkins Conservative Wetaskiwin, AB
The budget document you've provided for us today outlines basically the four core groups you have your office divided up into. I'm assuming that the budget for each of those is not simply for salaries. It includes all the related office expenses, such as rent for the office and those kinds of things. Or is the budget you've shown simply for salaries?
Commissioner of Lobbying, Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying
This is the $4.6 million allocated to program activities.
Do you want to answer that, René?
Deputy Commissioner, Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying
The salaries are included. The phones are included. Rent is the one cost not paid by us. It's paid by the centre. Public Works, I believe, takes care of that.
Conservative
Blaine Calkins Conservative Wetaskiwin, AB
This is simply salaries and operational costs within the office.
Commissioner of Lobbying, Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying
That's correct.
Conservative
Blaine Calkins Conservative Wetaskiwin, AB
For your six FTEs dealing with registration of client services, that's $187,600 per employee. In the investigations directorate, you have nine people, at a little over $1 million, which is $114,000 per employee. In education and research, you have seven FTEs, at $950,000, which breaks down to $135,700 per employee. Then in internal services, you have six full-time equivalents, with a budget of $1.5 million, which is roughly $254,500 per employee.
I was a little surprised to hear that rent and those kinds of things weren't taken into consideration. Are these highly technical, highly professional jobs?
Commissioner of Lobbying, Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying
As Mr. Leblanc was saying as well, it does include other operating costs. The cost of the registry, which costs me, right now, about $400,000 a year, is actually in the registry. It's not an easy, cut and—
Conservative
Blaine Calkins Conservative Wetaskiwin, AB
I just wanted some clarification. You would be buying computer servers and these kinds of things. It's not just operational. There are some capital investments in some of these budgets as well. Is that correct?
Commissioner of Lobbying, Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying
That's right. To give you an idea, $2.5 million of my operating budget goes to salaries; $1.7 million is operating, and that includes roughly about $1.2 million that actually goes to our service providers. All of those numbers are factored in.
Conservative
Blaine Calkins Conservative Wetaskiwin, AB
Okay, that's fair enough. I wasn't assuming that everybody was getting paid whatever those numbers were. But I'm putting a taxpayers' lens in front of my eyes when I look at this information. I'm going to ask you some more questions about this.
I'm going to specifically ask about the investigations directorate. You have nine full-time equivalents there.
Can you tell me what an administrative review is? First, what's involved in that before I ask my next question. What is an administrative review?
Commissioner of Lobbying, Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying
An administrative review is my fact-finding stage. We gather information—
Conservative
Commissioner of Lobbying, Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying
It is based on a complaint. I can also initiate and have done so when something is brought to my attention. I'm not totally complaint driven. That would include gathering sufficient information that I can make a determination as to how to proceed.
Conservative
Blaine Calkins Conservative Wetaskiwin, AB
Yes. I don't want to fail to follow up here, so I'm going to move on quickly.
The first step is administrative review. Then, if there's enough information, it goes on to an investigation. If there's enough information from that, it goes to a referral to the RCMP. Is that correct?
Commissioner of Lobbying, Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying
When I have reasonable grounds I can refer it to the RCMP. I can do that at any time during the process.
Conservative
Blaine Calkins Conservative Wetaskiwin, AB
If you initiated 79 administrative reviews, and 14 investigations resulted, and there were seven referrals to the RCMP in this past year, that's basically 100 files, which breaks down to about $10,000 per file. At a caseload of 10 issues per person per year, is that stressing people out in investigations?
Commissioner of Lobbying, Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying
It's not quite an exact match. I'd have to go back to the numbers, but since I've become commissioner, I have opened 79 administrative reviews and 14 investigations. Not all of those 14 investigations necessarily resulted from completion of an administrative review, because if I have reasons, like I inherited.... In an administrative review I may open two investigations, depending on what actually happened.
In terms of your question as to are people taxed, I have four investigators and one compliance officer all reporting to a director of investigations. On average, there are about 50 files at any one point that are being managed, because there are administrative reviews, investigations, and exemption reviews.
There is quite a lot of work being done, but we've been streamlining processes. We have solid investigators with the right competencies. They're working full out, but they're managing.
NDP
The Chair NDP Pierre-Luc Dusseault
Unfortunately, your time is up.
I am going to give the floor to Mr. Angus, for five minutes.
