Information & Ethics committee  Yes, but I don't have numbers as to whether it happens often that people from Ottawa move into the private sector.

Information & Ethics committee  For former designated public office holders in the last year, we've probably had communications with 200 and some people about their obligations. Whether or not they choose to work in organizations or corporations, or choose to do the 20% lobbying, that, I don't know.

Information & Ethics committee  I would say so. Some people understand the.... The prohibition is five years of not communicating with federal officials, so they should just not lobby, except for those who work for corporations, who do have some wiggle room. They will check as to what constitutes lobbying. If they're not sure, before they pick up a phone or decide to write a letter, they will sometimes call us, yes.

Information & Ethics committee  Good afternoon Mr. Chair and members of the Committee. I am appearing before you today to explain the lobbying restrictions under the Lobbying Act that apply to designated public office holders when they leave federal office. Under the act and regulations, designated positions include those held by ministers and their staff and by many senior executives within government, such as deputy ministers, chief executive officers, associate or assistant deputy ministers and other executives of comparable rank.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, absolutely

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, absolutely. I'm a great believer in transparency. If the registry helps with any type of transparency with respect to foreign agents coming into Canada to do whatever they want to do.... Currently, though, on the registry for lobbying, in the scenario you just provided, they would be required to register on the registry of lobbyists if they're communicating on behalf of a foreign agency.

Information & Ethics committee  The first thing I will say is that I am not a national security expert. I know my registry. That's it. Having looked a bit, having sat on panels with individuals who deal with the American registry and having looked at the Australian registry, I think there would be an advantage to communicating with those individuals to see what the pros and the cons of their registries are.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes. The four of those—

Information & Ethics committee  For the seven requests I made in the budget, it's $400,000. It's half of what I asked for. The four positions I am looking to fill are in my public affairs policy shop, in order to have a backup in policy; a backup in communications; an editor-writer type of person; and a position in the corporate area.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, I hear you. I do not want to talk about redundancy. Maybe it's not backup. It's backup in the sense that when someone is away, the work stops. That's the type of backup I'm talking about. Is there enough work for two? Yes, there's enough work for three or four, but we make choices.

Information & Ethics committee  It would be a second position in communications and a second position in policy.

Information & Ethics committee  The other three would have been one person in finance and the other two in investigations and compliance work.

Information & Ethics committee  Well, right now we have 37 ongoing files, which we're splitting among three people. If I would be able to add two more workers, obviously we'd be able to spread the wealth a little bit better. The problem right with my compliance work, and the reason I chose not to fill those positions, is that we have a number of vacancies.

Information & Ethics committee  It's probably that I feel we're often very reactive instead of being able to be proactive. I have an education mandate. We are asked to do a lot of presentations. I want to be out there and reaching out to organizations, but I only have one person doing it all. I think that's the impact.

Information & Ethics committee  Possibly. I'm hoping that there would be more individuals ensuring that they register when they should be, but they don't know that. Yes, maybe it would have an impact on compliance. However, when you think that at any give time there are 7,000 lobbyists and I have 37 compliance files, you can see that in general people are abiding by the rules.