Information & Ethics committee  --then there was a subcategory of designated public office holders. In addition to having an additional reporting requirement of having to file a monthly communication if they had an oral arranged meeting with that individual, the other thing that was done through the act was that anybody in that designated public office holder category was subject to a five-year prohibition on lobbying activities.

Information & Ethics committee  You are now, as of September 20.

Information & Ethics committee  Regarding your first question, in terms of workload, I'm not expecting to see a difference in initial registrations being filed, because that requirement for filing has been there. I do expect to see an increase in communication reports, but the system can handle that. Because those go automatically onto the system, there's no additional verification of those by the office.

Information & Ethics committee  No, it doesn't, actually. I felt it was important to retable it, especially with the act up for review and in terms of transparency, to have the actual number of registered lobbyists properly accounted for. But in terms of the reasons why it is still down, they're still valid.

Information & Ethics committee  It's been in doing the outreach activities. So for example, as I indicated, one of the outreach activities I did was to the chamber of commerce. During that discussion it validated one of the things I'd been hearing, which is the fact that companies were deciding to rationalize in terms of how many people were actually speaking to government.

Information & Ethics committee  One of the things that I instituted in the office was what we call a media monitoring. So on a daily basis we're checking just to see references of lobbying. And in further verification, one of the initial checks is to determine whether the individuals or corporations are registered.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes--it's not a target.

Information & Ethics committee  In terms of the monthly communication reports, those go right up onto the system. We verify, and the system can handle the additional communication entries that are expected with the members of Parliament and senators now being included. In terms of the compliance side, I'm still expecting that we'll be able to do the same percentage of sampling.

Information & Ethics committee  The designated public office holder category is defined in the act in terms of the prime minister, ministers, ministers of state and their staff, and then bureaucracy, assistant deputy ministers and above; also comparable rank, which I have defined in an interpretation bulletin.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, in July 2008.

Information & Ethics committee  Prior to the act coming into force, we had roughly about what seemed to be a normal workload of around 300. When the Lobbying Act came into force, there was a significant backlog in terms of more than, I think, 1,000 registrations that we had to process because there was no transition period in 2008.

Information & Ethics committee  That's one of the things that, to be honest, we're trying to determine. When we were looking at the registration system this year, one of the improvements we're working on, trying to get better at, is in terms of predicting results. If you've seen the annual report this past year and so on, we've been talking about transactions, and that was important in terms of seeing how the registry could actually accommodate the number of changes that were occurring with the monthly reports.

Information & Ethics committee  I don't have a clear answer for you right now. That's what we're trying to determine. Our goal is that something shouldn't be, hopefully, taking us longer than three days. So that's what we're working on.

Information & Ethics committee  One of the things we've spent a lot of time and effort on with registration is making it as easy as possible for lobbyists to register online. What happens when a registration is filed is that there are advisers that go through it to make sure that the registration is complete before approving it and putting it up onto the system.

Information & Ethics committee  I think that conducting investigations in private is important for my report. The reason is that if I have to send the RCMP, I have to protect the integrity of the investigation it will conduct. To me, what's important is that it be clear in the act. When I have concluded an investigation, I have to submit a report to Parliament, with all of my findings.