Information & Ethics committee  Not for the Access to Information Act....

Information & Ethics committee  It has to be a resident of Canada who makes a request.

Information & Ethics committee  That's a very good question but a difficult one to measure. We did take steps to deal with a surge of requests on travel history. It's a fairly complex set of databases that need to be accessed. Through the Customs Act, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada has access to that database.

Information & Ethics committee  It's fair to say that the $5 fee, which was implemented at the beginning of the act, is something that we're obliged to collect, but it probably has little to no impact in terms of volume of requests, as was mentioned. We are seeing a spike in requests. Whether a different fee would deter that is very hard for us to determine.

Information & Ethics committee  I'm the director general for the corporate secretariat of CBSA. With me is Mr. Proulx, who is the access to information director for access to information and privacy. The ATIP division is responsible for oversight of the access to information function at the agency, which includes fulfilling and administering all legislative requirements for the act related to processing of requests, interacting with the public, CBSA employees, other government institutions, and with the Office of the Information Commissioner regarding investigations and audits, and implementing measures to enhance our capacity to process access to information requests.