I can certainly provide more details.
It was a bit complicated because the budget hadn't been approved yet. It's almost December and the situation is somewhat complex.
When determining the amount needed during the year, we calculated the cost of hiring 20 investigator employees. These employees would be permanent, temporary or contract. Eight consultants were also included in the plan. Amounts were allocated to supplementary legal aid services for investigations. An amount was also allocated to the computer network. As a result of the extra staff, we had to increase our network's computing capacity. Lastly, the $220,000 represents the additional benefits. This money doesn't come back to us.
To date, I think we've hired 16 people, including permanent, term and contract employees. Moreover, 17 consultants were incorporated into the Office of the Commissioner. We remained within the available budget. However, since we couldn't hire as many permanent employees as we had wanted as a result of the annual funding, we managed the situation this way.
Not all the employees started working at the same time. They needed training so that they could conduct investigations. We have a case management computer system. Everything is computerized, and the employees need training. That's why we brought them in gradually, in groups. We just hired one final group last week. We currently have stable staff. If the requested budget isn't approved today, we'll need to start reducing our staff.