First off, I'd like to thank you for inviting us to appear before you today to talk about the Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner's achievements over the past year as well as its plans for the upcoming year.
My name is Sandy Tremblay and I'm director of corporate management and chief financial officer at the office. I'm here today with Melanie Rushworth, who is director of communications, outreach and planning, and also responsible for parliamentary affairs.
At the administrative level, the office has 51 full-time employees and had a budget of $8.1 million in the previous fiscal year. Although we were able to fulfill our mandate with that amount, we underwent a reallocation exercise in order to better target our resources based on available programs, with an emphasis on supporting consultation and awareness-raising services. To that end, Mario Dion, the former commissioner, had asked for a budget increase of a little under $200,000 for the current fiscal year, representing about 2% of our budget.
While the majority of the $8.3-million budget for the office—a little over 80%—is for salaries, from an information technology standpoint, 65% of the professional services budget provides for an IT agreement for support and development from the House of Commons administration.
Part of the work we have been undertaking with their expertise in the past two fiscal years is to develop a new system that will consolidate the declaration portal, the case management system and the public registry, including the ability to securely receive financial documents. When complete, the new system will be rolled out with appropriate internal and external educational materials to aid in a successful transition. We anticipate being in a position later this fiscal year to present to PROC for approval the new forms under the Conflict of Interest Code for Members of the House of Commons that underpin the system.
The office seeks to show Canadians and Parliament that they can trust in its ability to fulfill its duties and functions under the Parliament of Canada Act and to use the funds at its disposal responsibly and efficiently, in other words, that it is a trusted manager of public funds.
I'd now like to yield the floor to Melanie Rushworth, who will outline some of the work we do with public office holders and the public.