Thank you for the question.
We can go back to the elements within the act that allow for verification. We spoke about the need to verify this declaration approach. We have to remember that the declaration approach is not just declaring that what they have in front of the commission is in fact a trade secret or confidential business information; they are also declaring that they have the substantiating information to back up the claim that it is confidential business information.
Whether it's an affected party, as you mentioned, or whether it's part of our random sampling scheme to verify, or whether it's the third element that you're specifically questioning, there is the need for a screening officer when they make a decision. The screening officer is the person within the commission who makes that quasi-judicial decision that, yes, this is a valid trade secret, and the screening officers need to know that they have the information before them on which to make an informed decision.
In some cases they may look at the declaration that a claimant has brought forward, and just by virtue of the number--the value that is being suggested as the economic loss they would suffer, the economic consequences they would suffer by virtue of this having to be fully disclosed rather being protected--they will know through their experience, either with that industry sector or with that particular company, since most of the companies we have as claimants are the large multinational global companies, that the number can't possibly be accurate on the face of it, so they'll need to go behind the number. They'll say they need to have that substantiating information--your economic analysis--to tell me how you arrived at that number.
It's only in doing so that a screening officer can make an informed decision and then be able to say whether this claim is valid or not.