Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm going to continue along the line that I was on, Ms. Legault, because I do find it interesting to review this from my first round. Of the 55,000 requests of all departments—I know they're going up and then what trickles up to you in terms of complaints goes up accordingly—29,300 were commercial in origin, or media/business, and that represents about 53% of overall requests.
If you look at the pure costs to government.... I don't think anyone here disputes the need for this process, certainly, and we appreciate the work done by your office to increase your closure rate. But it was a $995 cost in 1983, and a $1,295 cost in 2012, representing a cost of $71 million to government. This is an important cost, but I think funding could be found for not just your office but for getting rid of this backlog. I notice that your graph at tab 3 has you projecting this 30% rate to essentially continue until 2018, so we're going to be essentially in hundreds of millions of dollars of cost and we're still charging the five dollars that was the 1983 price. Even the Bank of Canada's own inflation calculator says that should now be a $10 and $65 charge.
Here's where I'm going. Would it not be smart for Canada to follow some other jurisdictions that have bifurcated this into a low-cost ATI option for citizens and a somewhat higher one, not full cost recovery, not $1,295...? But for a telecommunications company preparing for the CRTC, at a five-dollar rate they can throw out as many ATI requests as possible—and I've seen this—whether or not some of them are even germane to their filing, because there's such an inconsequential cost for business, yet government absorbs all the work.
Would you be in favour of a two-tier process whereby we keep the price low, maybe the $10 and $65, and gear the citizen request to inflation but have a significant, higher fee for commercial requests?
