Tab 2 of the documents I handed out provides a history of the funding requests we have submitted to the government over the past few years.
A few years ago, officers of Parliament were under the authority of the advisory panel on the funding of officers of Parliament. In 2010, we requested emergency funding to address a specific case. The government then implemented cost containment measures.
When the officers of Parliament were asked for recommendations under the deficit reduction action plan, we advised Minister Nicholson that we could not absorb a budget cut. We, nevertheless, saw our funding decrease by 5%. In real terms, that is now equivalent to 6% of our budget. That was a larger reduction than what we had recommended to our minister. As far as I know, we are the only officers of Parliament who experienced that.
Then, last year, we were forced to relocate, and the government made us pay for the move. We made a Treasury Board submission outlining our financial situation, and we pointed out that we could not afford to pay for the office's move. So Treasury Board recommended that we finance the relocation with a loan, repayable over 15 years. Repayment of that loan further reduces our budget by 2%.
For the past two years, we have submitted our budget requests to the Minister of Justice, who is responsible for our office, in order to receive funding under the federal budget and be able to make a submission to Treasury Board. My colleague spoke with the people at the Treasury Board Secretariat to find out what funding mechanism we could use to make a request, as an officer of Parliament. I believe Ms. Michaud was even in contact with them this week, via email.
We were prepared to make a submission to Treasury Board but were told to direct our request to the Minister of Justice and to go through the estimates process. That is what we did. If the government tells us it will consider a Treasury Board submission, obviously, we will make one. It's ready to go, in fact.