Just to give a bit of context, when the commission was first established by order in council, before the issue of Mr. Morgan's nomination came before this committee, the secretariat was established quickly. We brought in Mr. Peter Harrison, who was the executive director at the time. The idea was to get it up and running as quickly as possible.
Then, following the issue of Mr. Morgan's nomination and as the commission was held in abeyance, we nevertheless endeavoured to ensure that, at the time the government would want to proceed with the commission, everything would be in place to be able to proceed rapidly. That involved doing a lot of examination of other jurisdictions that have similar systems in place—Alberta, British Columbia, and the U.K. It involved consultations with departments and agencies. Also, there was work done on other peripheral issues. For example, Mr. Harrison did some work on the issue of nominations at the IRB, at the request of the minister.
We toned it down at one point, because it had four staff and we said there wasn't enough work for four people. But we've kept basically one senior person and one support staff to continue the preparatory work, in terms of drafting a code of conduct, drafting the plans, because this would be a massive undertaking, a massive change in ensuring that there are selection processes run not just for heads of agencies, but for all positions filled by the GIC, which in a typical year can be as many as 1,000. So 1,000 selection processes are quite an endeavour.
Right now, we have that minimum staff of, as I said, one senior analyst and one support staff who are continuing the work to ensure that if and when the government wants to proceed with the commission, we're able to do so very quickly.