Procedure and House Affairs committee  That would be one possibility. This committee was very open last year to dealing with problems as they came up. We dealt with the gift issues, for example. They were quite a problem. If you put a limit on there of every two years, it might not be frequent enough, in some cases.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  There may be. The gifts are perfect examples. My sense was that people did not understand how draconian those rules were before you changed them, so that was a perfect example of where the problems did emerge. I'm quite prepared to raise those as we see a commonality. In fact, where I go out of my way to raise them is in my annual report.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, and I'll tell you why. However, I will do so in English. Some reports from members are more complicated than others, so sometimes it takes time to sort out the details of how they can comply with the code requirements. In fact, I can give you the breakdown. There are two files in our office that we're sorting out how they should comply, and there are 18 that are outstanding.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I misspoke, actually. We're waiting for more information from them, or we're waiting for them to approve the final statement.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  It would seem to be a long time. I note, as well, that in the act, which we also administer, there is a 120-day deadline to complete their--

Procedure and House Affairs committee  In a general way; we've not sat down and actually drafted out any proposals or anything. But maybe if there was the discretion to disclose the reasons why we did not proceed...always considering the public interest. There may be situations where one shouldn't do it. I could add as well that generally those provisions on the inquiries are a little bit confused.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Speaker. With me is Lyne Robinson-Dalpé, the assistant commissioner for compliance and advisory; and Mr. Eppo Maertens, the acting assistant commissioner for learning and communications, as we're now calling it. Mr. Chair and members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to appear before you today.

Information & Ethics committee  How many, Lyne?

Information & Ethics committee  This is before we get our four extra staff, so there would be a total of 12, I guess. Is that correct, Lyne?

Information & Ethics committee  There's a requirement in the act that they make a report that is made public, and we've not had any to make public.

Information & Ethics committee  When the new act came into force, there was wider scope for people to be investigated. There will be more investigations than there were before the act. We did a schematic sort of exercise and we came up with a figure of $24,000 per investigation. As I said, there's a big range of possibilities on how extensive an investigation needs to be.

Information & Ethics committee  They have to report the family members in the sponsor travel report under the code.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, it is.

Information & Ethics committee  We'd have to put a public report out on that. We haven't had any reports.