First, thank you, Minister, for attending today.
In the backgrounder I have before me entitled “Government proposals to revitalize access to information”, it says:
In 2014-15, federal institutions spent over $67 million in direct costs to administer the Access to Information Act.
That was for staff and business systems for processing requests. It doesn't include costs associated with business areas, and searching for and reviewing documents.
Do we assess the costs of folks reviewing and searching for documents? As an evidence-based decision-making government, are we trying to capture that time and the cost to government of that time?