The $5 was worth $12 in 1983, if you factor in inflation. Over the years we've gone from $12 to $5.
In 2009 I advocated abolishing the fee. I don't see it as a deterrent to vexatious and frivolous requests. You can address that by amending the legislation to deal with vexatious and frivolous requests frontally and brutally, if you want to, by extending those clauses to deal with that.
I think that in my 2009 testimony at this committee, I said that the $5 was actually costing departments $55 to process. Now that's a cheque. You'll hear the argument that it may only be 75¢ now if you do it electronically, but it has to be booked. It has to be accounted for, and somewhere down the line, it has to be internally audited—and potentially by the Auditor General. The cost of doing that has reached the point of being a bit ridiculous, if you look at other regimes and what they do with fees.
Thank you.