It's interesting, because I was at the MGERC in 2011 and the issues are the same. I was listening to Mr. Vihar Joshi, and they haven't changed that much. It's the same thing for the ombudsman.
As agents of Parliament, the good news is that we are reporting to Parliament. We are completely independent. The resource issue is the only thing that really affects us. It really has an impact on whether or not we have the resources to fulfill our mandate. Apart from that, I am investigating the Minister of National Defence, the Minister of Justice, the Minister of Finance and the President of the Treasury Board. We are reporting to Parliament the results of our investigations.
Without the proper resources and the proper mechanisms to get the resources, it is impacting our ability to do more. About 87% of my budget is salary. I'm like Commissioner Solloway: I have an IT team that's super small. We can't go to the cloud. We can't do things that other big departments can do quickly. I want to do more investigations. I want to reduce my timelines. I want to be more efficient with the mandate that I've been given. We have to make choices on where the money is going to go. Those are difficult.
I'm sure that reporting to a minister as an ombudsman is not the same thing. When you have decisions being made by a department, you're responsible for that. We have a completely separate mandate.