Information & Ethics committee  For seniors, we entertain several complaints that are made usually on their behalf. We try to operate a change in the practice of the company that's preying on them. I think we've been fairly successful in the complaints we've had. As for children, we have a whole new initiative on youth privacy, which was an issue we really brought to international attention when we hosted the international conference in 2005.

Information & Ethics committee  Well, I think for those who know about this and are in the business of security, threat and risk assessments are something fairly standard. Now, as for exactly how they carry them out, the experts know. We don't talk about our own assessment to the private sector companies, for example, or the government departments, but we certainly do dwell on the principle, the importance of security to maintaining confidentiality and privacy.

Information & Ethics committee  We did in the past when we had a significant increase in our budget. The whole budget history of the office is not there in the estimates, but in fact our budget has been doubled over the last five years. So within that context, it certainly seems like there's been a major increase in our funds.

Information & Ethics committee  Like everybody, lawyers have a kind of scale of progression. I think one of the things the federal government wants to do as an employer is recruit bright young lawyers and then make sure they stay within the federal government by offering them possibilities to progress. So there is an entry level, which is 1A.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes.

Information & Ethics committee  Again, I haven't looked at it, but a lot of the commissions have a legal bent. We certainly need lawyers because we're interpreting two laws. One of the laws is very new and doesn't have a lot of interpretation, so the work of the lawyers is extremely important. Our work is subject to judicial review by the Federal Court, so we have to make sure we're doing everything legally.

Information & Ethics committee  We identified them through in-house debate and brainstorming based on a reading of not only what the public came to us for, but the challenges looming outside in our environment. We have quite a few different goals, such as a genetic privacy working group. On what we have done for the last year, maybe I'll go to this year, because we're on estimates for this year.

Information & Ethics committee  I don't think there's anything serious. I'm going to ask the director of corporate services to speak to that, because we have initiated a very serious risk management program, and we annually update this risk management profile. We are very concerned about possible breaches and the impact they would have on Canadians' confidence in their personal information if our office couldn't withstand breaches.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes.

Information & Ethics committee  No. This is one of the questions this committee brought up quite a while ago, so particularly in the categories of aboriginals, persons with disabilities, and visible minorities, we made an effort to encourage those groups to apply and also to retain them when they worked for us as students, as contract workers, and so on, with their being qualified, of course.

Information & Ethics committee  I must say that I haven't had time to look into it. I don't know. I think it's probably fairly rare.

Information & Ethics committee  We should. One of the things we're trying to focus on in terms of making the workplace respond to the needs of younger people is the issue of work-life balance. That is something that I think women have brought to the workplace more than the previous demographic, so I would think the importance of maintaining a healthy work-life balance, accepted by all employees, probably relates to the feminization of the office.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, I believe it has.

Information & Ethics committee  No. I haven't appeared before that committee. I would be very happy to appear before it, because it's an important piece of legislation dealing with spam and the anti-spam initiative, and it's also giving important new discretionary powers to deal with complaints in a discretionary and, I think, a more productive manner.

Information & Ethics committee  I hope it would allow my office, certainly in PIPEDA--because it would change PIPEDA, not the Privacy Act--to have more discretion, to be exercised reasonably, of course, to focus on the issues that are new challenges to Canadians or issues for all Canadian. I would hope that it would allow us to be able to move away from what has seemed to us recently to be highly personalized issues, which often are family issues or issues with employers, and to refer them to a more proper venue, which might be either a court where family or matrimonial proceedings are taking place, or labour arbitration, so that we can concentrate on what would best serve the greatest number of Canadians rather than very particular, highly personalized cases that don't raise new issues.