Thank you very much.
In terms of children, yes, we've talked a lot about children, and it is a real focus. I think what you're alluding to are different cultural and religious views of what childhood is, and you made a reference to child brides. For example, there was a case that came out in the media recently about a young person, I think in the Punjab area of India, who actually asked for the assistance of the Canadian mission. She made her wishes known, and her return to Canada was facilitated successfully.
I think that goes to show that, to get to your next question, there's a minuscule number of cases in the media. We have 142,000 active cases. Of that, we have a smaller subset of about 5,000 or 6,000 that are distress cases. Of that, there's a smaller—yet smaller—subset of complex distress cases that we manage here in Ottawa. Of those, there are maybe a dozen that hit the media. So I think we have to always put things in perspective.
I know that one of my officers basically said to me, “Look, we know we can't even talk about our success cases because of the Privacy Act, and we understand that and we want to keep that information confidential, unless someone gives consent.” They say their reward is working every day of the week. They know they've made a positive contribution—they know it, we know it—and that's enough.
In terms of the attitude of our officers, they work within a constrained context, because basically we are at the point where, in terms of providing additional information, what we can say is that under the Privacy Act we cannot provide further information unless that person gives consent. This is in terms of any case that comes before us. We are taking real steps to make sure this information is guarded. We have firewalls between our case notes and we take precautions. We train people. We make sure that leakages don't happen, because these can be damaging, not only to the case but also to the person, and that's our particular concern.
One last point on the children's issue that I just wanted to make is that we also act as national coordinators of our missing children program, where we work very closely with the RCMP, CBSA, and the Department of Justice. So we're trying to be active on all fronts.
Thank you.