With all due respect, I must say that I do not really agree with you. In Quebec, for instance, the ombudsman covers 23 departments, commissions, administrative tribunals and so forth. Given the breath of his mandate, the ombudsman should naturally report to the National Assembly in Quebec or the Legislative Assembly in Ontario.
Moreover, as we all know, there are federal parliamentary agents, as for example the Information Commissioner, the Privacy Commissioner, the Chief Electoral Officers and the Auditor General. Given these people's mandates cover the government as a whole, it seems natural to me that they should report to a parliamentary committee or to Parliament.
As the member said, this is nonetheless an issue about which reasonable people can reasonably draw different conclusions. I am speaking from my own point of view, based on my experience and on what has worked in this environment.
With regard to the workload, I can say that in our office, on an average year, we receive about 1,400 or 1,600 complaints. They come from the 60,000 members of the regular forces, the 30,000 members of the reserves and from families.
In certain news clippings that I read, it was mentioned that about 700,000 veterans were currently negotiating with the Department of Veterans Affairs. This is a much larger base. This would lead us to believe that the number of complaints will be probably larger than ours. We must also keep in mind that veterans who can no longer work and who have financial problems probably have more opportunities to deal with their ombudsman than to members of the regular armed forces who are deployed or who are hard at work.
With regard to the budget allocated to our office, it amounts to $6.5 million. This amount was granted to us for the past fiscal year. We have spent $5.3 million of that amount. This covers a staff of about 50 persons.