To be clear, we do not provide training directly. Our commissioner's office is committed to meet as often as possible with the greatest possible number of public servants and managers. In the first document we distributed to the committee, we list the number of contacts that we make as well as the number of presentations. You can find that in tab 3. It shows the number of people with whom we meet. We do not provide training.
At the beginning of our mandate, from 2007 to 2010, I and a colleague personally provided training to lawyers from the Department of Justice. That was in the first years when the act was in effect. We have gained a little more experience and have begun to conduct investigations. As you know, our commissioner's office has taken a little time to get going. When we began to conduct investigations, we spent some time considering the natural conflict that could be created. If we conduct investigations in one department, in our view, providing training carries with it the risk of placing ourselves into a certain position, when we do not want to do so. We want to allow ourselves the flexibility to determine whether we are going to launch an investigation or not in such and such a situation.
We came to the conclusion that, ideally, it would be up to the Treasury Board Secretariat to provide the training. That said, we once held a seminar with senior departmental officials. I believe that it was in 2010-2011, with Commissioner Mario Dion.
Our focus is the presentations. We give presentations to unions, groups, communities, like the finance officers for example, and also to senior officials. We have an advisory committee made up of 15 or 20 senior officials from different organizations. We meet with them about four times a year. We are on that committee and we exchange ideas with them. The senior officials' community is quite active. It is represented by a small group, a sample of all senior officials.