You've probably had the pleasure of meeting Shahid Minto, who was with the department before and through a selection process has become the ombudsman for the department. He has a team with him. He reports directly to the minister; he does not report to me. Administratively, he's part of the department, so we have a relationship through service level agreements for HR management, financial management, and things of that nature. I put emphasis on this because the ombudsman is truly an ombudsman, separate, reporting to the Minister of Public Works and Government Services.
With respect to his work, his mandate deals with contracts that are below the threshold of $25,000. He also has power and responsibilities to carry out investigations if need be. He has the capacity to do that as well. We meet with him regularly. I'm speaking a bit about his business, but we have quite an ongoing relationship because I can glean a fair amount of information from him, which is useful to me in my administration. He's been dealing with complaints. I don't have the numbers; it's not my line of business.
I must admit, Madam Meredith, I was positively surprised that he's not swamped with complaints, but he obviously has work coming his way. Frankly, for me, the ombudsman doing his work--as I say, he's independent--also allows me to be better in the work I'm doing.
One last point I would make, Mr. Chairman, is that his function, as per the Federal Accountability Act and regulations, does not preclude me from having a function to also resolve disputes, and I do have that. If you are an outsider, you can either access the department to get satisfaction with a complaint you have or go directly to the ombudsman and the CITT, if the threshold is there, etc. That's the way things are operating.
I would say, generally speaking, it has been very good. He's going to be, if I remember, filing his first report just before the summer, which will outline essentially what it is that he's been doing over his first year of mandate.