Information & Ethics committee  I will ask my assistant to answer that question.

Information & Ethics committee  We have a requirement for an annual review of the declarations that public office holders have made, and the MPs as well, so once a year we send a letter to MPs. In that letter, we remind them of their obligations and ask them to update their information. That's one area where we've made an enormous improvement over this past year, because when I came into the office I found that some of those annual reviews had lagged for two or three years, and we're now completely up to date.

Information & Ethics committee  Each of the investigations takes a different length of time. There's no standard amount of time. We did an average of the four that we did, and we found that the average was about five and a half months, I believe. As for the cost, we support our investigations almost entirely internally.

Information & Ethics committee  The drafters of the code, who are the MPs, chose to allow sponsored travel. The only comment I can make is that at least it has to be disclosed. I find disclosure is very important in any kind of a conflict of interest regime. At least you can see what the MPs are doing in the annual disclosure.

Information & Ethics committee  That's an increasing priority. I have to say that in the first year I came into office my entire effort had to be put to getting the office staffed up and to make sure the mechanisms we had in there for information were accurate. The other thing about the first year in your mandate is that it's probably not the year to come out very quickly with all sorts of objections to the materials you're administering.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, I think you probably will.

Information & Ethics committee  It's one that I have not, to date, spent a lot of time on, because there are so many other important areas that I deal with. But I'll take your suggestion. Certainly the work you requested actually has just shown the breadth of the different approaches in sponsored travel. Yes, we'll do some thinking on that, although with the MP code, unlike the act, it is the MPs who have created that code for themselves.

Information & Ethics committee  Right now we have $3.3 million of expenditures and we're expecting another $300,000, so that's $3.6 million. If we add the employee benefits plan to that, which is $800,000, we're at $4.4 million--but that doesn't make sense, because we're lapsing $900,000, so it's $4.5 million.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes.

Information & Ethics committee  We have now had some competitions, and there are four who will shortly come on strength. Can you add to that, Denise?

Information & Ethics committee  It's a full complement.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, we have some. Denise Benoit has some information.

Information & Ethics committee  Can I turn that over to you, Denise?

Information & Ethics committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. When we met last month on March 2, I gave you a brief overview of the role of my office. In the interim, I forwarded to you a response to the committee's question on how Canada treats sponsored travel for members of Parliament in relation to other jurisdictions.

Information & Ethics committee  Thank you very much. I look forward to it.