Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Clement and Mr. Adamson and Ms. Charette, welcome to this committee. We are very happy to have you here. Mr. Clement, if you were able to stay longer we would keep you here for longer than the scheduled hour because we have many questions to ask you.
The President and CEO of the Chicago Open Data Institute recently appeared before this committee and gave us quite an amazing presentation.
One of the charter principles is that data should be open by default. This organization had a list of lobbyists, how many there were and even the sums of money that each one was receiving in contracts, etc. There was complete transparency. He told us that, depending on the policy and the mayor in power, that data could be open, partially open, withdrawn, available to everyone or not, depending on the will of the politicians.
How can the government explain the fact that it wants to be more transparent for Canadians and provide open data, but the number of complaints being filed with the Information Commissioner of Canada has considerably increased under the Conservatives?
Here are a few numbers: there were 1,465 complaints in 2012, 1,596 in 2013 and 1,957 in 2014, which does not include the complaints filed in the month of March which have not yet been calculated.