Government Operations committee  First of all, the clerk is the head of the public service. In that role, from the point of view of giving direction on a government-wide basis, he issues an annual report every year. In his reports he has outlined an action plan, with expectations for all departments. As I just m

Government Operations committee  I apologize for the translation, or for the turn of phrase. What it's referring to is the new audit policy that has been put in by the Treasury Board ministers. What that refers to is that we are setting up our external audit committee, and we have set up an audit organization wi

Government Operations committee  What that relates to is that in 2007 we launched in PCO our first strategic HR plan. There had not been one before. In that plan we did a number of focus groups with managers and staff to try to determine what we could do to improve both the workforce and the workplace, for the e

Government Operations committee  I can't speak specifically as to whether there are particular departments that are consulting with us more or less. We are consulted, but we also have to go out and consult, so it is a two-way street. But in all business related to ATIP, it is going up in volume. I could get yo

Government Operations committee  Right. I should explain. There are actually two different organizations inside Privy Council Office that are occupied with ATIP. One is the one that works for me, which actually gets the requests for information for both the access to information and privacy. We handle those. The

Government Operations committee  No. He speaks to cabinet confidences in the report.

Government Operations committee  Yes. There are two or three things that happen. We have consultations between departments when there is more than one department that may have an interest in the file--

Government Operations committee  --but there is also a review of cabinet confidences, a review of information or documents to determine whether or not they fall under section 69 of the act. That is the part that goes through legal counsel, and the documents are reviewed there. In the report he made specific refe

Government Operations committee  You're exactly right. So anything that has to do with cabinet confidences, the cabinet confidence organization...any ATIP organization in any department will forward documents there to have them reviewed to ensure that we are not letting information go that shouldn't. There's al

Government Operations committee  No. As soon as anything is thought to be a cabinet confidence, it goes through exactly the same process. It's very rigorous.

Government Operations committee  It comes to PCO and it is the cabinet confidence group inside of PCO that makes that determination.

Government Operations committee  No.

Government Operations committee  I wasn't in the department for all of that period of time, but I do know there were two or three things that would have contributed to the decrease. One was that in 2006-07 there was a transfer of responsibilities out of PCO, when we returned to core business and transferred $14

Government Operations committee  Mr. Chair, PCO is a very small department and we are very centralized. We are all here in Ottawa, and we do not deliver programs, nor are we in any way regionalized. So what we have done in our department is really to focus our energy on ensuring that the people who are doing the

Government Operations committee  That's correct.