As I touched on in my opening statement, the most noticeable impact is that, when I have investigators I can assign cases to, we process complaints fairly efficiently. What's happening now is that, despite the considerable reduction in the inventory I inherited, we still have 1,800 cases in the inventory on top of all incoming cases. That means that our ability to reduce that inventory and to keep processing complaints effectively and efficiently is obviously hindered by the budget cuts. In fact, I said that last year.
No doubt, the topic will come up again in two weeks when I appear before the committee regarding the main estimates. But, yes, when you consider that our median turnaround time to process a complaint stands at 215 days, as compared with 86 days when I have someone to assign a case to, the difference is significant. That is important because, when it comes to access to information, clearly the office's ability to independently review government decisions is one of the keystones of a well-running access to information regime. So, in my view, yes, the budget cuts do adversely affect requesters' rights.