I will give you a preliminary overview, and then I will ask the others to add more details.
For the Atlantic region, we have an office in Moncton. We also have offices in Montreal and Toronto. We have a satellite office in Sudbury, that is to say a person who does liaison. We have an office in Winnipeg and another in Edmonton, as well as a satellite office in Regina. We also have a satellite office in Vancouver, although that one has not been active for a certain number of years.
There are about 20 people in the offices throughout the country. This represents approximately $1.9 million for the regional offices, or 8.2% of our budget.
Since the beginning of my mandate, we have made some changes to the vocation of these offices. Following her assessment of the risk of conflicts of interest and the appearance of conflicts of interest, Dyane Adam had decided that the regional investigation staff who live in the communities should not investigate complaints about institutions in those regions, because this could bring about the perception of a conflict of interest.
When we reviewed the A-base funding, we examined the purpose of our offices, and then Ms. Saikaley reorganized her branch. She asked an interesting question: if investigators in the regions do not investigate in the regions, why are they in the regions? And so we did a reorganization. With one exception, the regional investigators who did not want to come to Ottawa stayed with the Compliance Assurance Branch and became liaison agents. We made an exception for one analyst who does very high quality investigations. He is highly experienced and we are willing to accommodate him in order not to lose him.
Following this change of vocation, the regional offices deal only with communication activities, promotion and liaison with federal institutions. For instance, these offices organize tours in schools and have contacts with the communities. They report to the Policy and Communications Branch and they conduct promotional activities.