Information & Ethics committee  Yes.

Information & Ethics committee  As I indicated when Mr. Easter asked me if I was looking at the issue of Green Power Generation and Mr. Patrick Glémaud and Mr. Jaffer, if the matter is in the public domain, I am ready to disclose if I am doing an investigation or not.

Information & Ethics committee  In such a case, because it is in the public domain, I believe that it is in the interest of the public to know if I am investigating or not. As soon as possible, I will give the date when I will submit my report to Parliament if I decide to launch an investigation.

Information & Ethics committee  That is interesting because, during my outreach, I talked to officials of the 20 departments where there is the most lobbying activity. That was just after Parliament had decided to include the parliamentary secretaries in the definition of public office holders. The government said it would look at the issue and might expand the definition to include senators.

Information & Ethics committee  What happens, and we've actually been refining it, is I actually will officially sign off a document asking the director of investigations to commence an administrative review. And like I say, it's fairly extensive. The investigator will develop a plan in terms of determining what elements need to be proven.

Information & Ethics committee  We're trying to maintain an average of 5%. For example, we send out a number of letters, and instead of maybe sending out 30 or 40, whatever the random sample was, it's now almost 80.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes.

Information & Ethics committee  As I was answering Mr. Siksay earlier on how we monitor and then maybe make further determinations, this individual was a registered lobbyist and there was a question as to whether the person had breached rule 2. In the first time around, it was questionable. It was determined that the individual hadn't intentionally done so.

Information & Ethics committee  He had not done so intentionally, so I sent him a letter with a warning. Subsequently, the individual did the same thing, with the same government institution. So given that I had done an administrative review and warned him, his repetition of the same activity I thought warranted actually opening an investigation.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, on that particular case, I thought it was warranted.

Information & Ethics committee  I may have misunderstood the question. I thought she was asking me if I believed that other lobbyists should be included in the definition. At this time, we refer to consultant lobbyists and in-house lobbyists. The problem is that the Act refers to activities. Is the person being paid?

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, but because of the—

Information & Ethics committee  Yes.

Information & Ethics committee  That's something, Mr. Chair, I could do a proper analysis of in the provinces and provide the committee with some additional information. What I can say at this point is that in Alberta and British Columbia, the possibility of administering monetary penalties exists in their legislation.

Information & Ethics committee  The lobbyist registration system is a web-based electronic system. It's a very robust system, so it can easily handle the additional volume of monthly communications.