Government Operations committee  Good morning and thank you very much, Mr. Chair and committee members, for the invitation to appear before you as you study the Public Servants Disclosure Protection Act. I am joined by my colleague, François Choquette, our Senior Legal Counsel. I thought I would begin by takin

Government Operations committee  It's very brief, like my last one. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Joining me this morning is François Choquette, senior legal counsel for the Tribunal. The Tribunal's very existence serves as a safeguard for the integrity of the public service as it demonstrates the seriousness of the

Government Operations committee  As I shared with you at the last meeting, we've had seven cases since the law came into force. Within those, we have not had one full hearing or a decision on merit yet. We have a hearing coming up in April. One was scheduled for trial. After two days in the hearing, they reques

Government Operations committee  Per year? We've received seven.

Government Operations committee  We've received seven—

Government Operations committee  Since the beginning of the legislation.

Government Operations committee  It's about one per year.

Government Operations committee  It's a difficult question for the tribunal to be able to answer. As you know, we tend to remain neutral as to what comes to our office. Our members deal with the cases that are brought before them.

Government Operations committee  I believe so. We have rules of procedure that establish the disclosure. Once we receive the application from the commissioner, within a couple of days the notice goes out to all of the parties with a disclosure schedule. François may have more specifics but in past cases...again

Government Operations committee  No. It's usually the party.

Government Operations committee  No. It isn't. Our office is quite small and I actually manage two tribunals.

Government Operations committee  With tribunals, of course, it's based on their enabling legislation. It's the Competition Tribunal, so the law is completely different and the rules are completely different. Most of the applications come through the office of the commissioner of competition. We do have certain a

Government Operations committee  I'm sure that we would be able to apply whatever changes to the legislation that Parliament decides to give us. When the act was put into place in 2007, without knowing what would be coming before the tribunal we had a structure of about 15 FTEs. Right now it's minimal. There's m

Government Operations committee  I'm not sure. If you look at it, some of the cases before the Competition Tribunal deal with mergers and that type of information....

Government Operations committee  Perhaps. I'm really not....