Wonderful, and thank you first to both you two gentlemen for coming here today. It helps us immensely to have you here, and Mr. Mendel, thank you for calling in today and coordinating with us.
If you don't mind, Mr. Chair, before I begin my questioning I want to express some of the disappointment in seeing this in the budget. It was something that we had undertaken and was something as a committee we were prepared to put a lot of time into. We had a lot of witnesses lined up, and unfortunately it appears that the government is moving ahead with making a model, without hearing the fulsome discussion of the committee.
That being said, I'd like to hear your thoughts, hopefully from all three of you depending on time, but maybe we'll start with you, Ambassador.
One of the Information Commissioner's recommendations is to open this up to people who aren't citizens, people who aren't Canadians but make requests here. I am hoping to get the thoughts of all three of you on what you think that means for the volume of requests, and Ambassador Sjogren, in your country's example of how much resource and financial commitment that may potentially bog down the office.
If you don't mind, all three of you, could you elaborate a bit more on that.