Information & Ethics committee  In terms of a sufficient amount to actually work on the inventory and the incoming complaints, the $3 million we had this past year was as much as we can absorb as an organization right now, because we didn't increase our internal services or our executive cadre. We were able to

Information & Ethics committee  No, it's not pro-rated, actually, so that's a good sign.

Information & Ethics committee  I think we were very successful. I can show you. We made a small, simple graph. Michael has copies of it; we could distribute it to the committee. It shows for each year we had in the backlog how many files we closed for each year. Of the files from previous years, we closed almo

Information & Ethics committee  If we got the same amount of ongoing funding for next year, we would probably reduce it to a fairly small number for another year.

Information & Ethics committee  —by 800 per year. We get about 2,100 new files now, for the last few years, and we have 2,800 in the backlog. We can tackle about 800 or 900 more overall in the system.

Information & Ethics committee  I think the sustainable level of funding is about $15 million. It's about that. I noticed your asking my colleague what comparatives have been looked at. The Ontario office, which is a provincial office that doesn't have the same kinds of files that we do, has a budget of about $

Information & Ethics committee  Yes. They have order making power and are responsible for privacy as well, so they have a joint office. They don't, however, have the national security files and don't have the Canada Revenue Agency files. They therefore have different levels of complexity.

Information & Ethics committee  I tend to look domestically, because, first of all, we're the only jurisdiction with split mandates at the federal level, and we don't all have the same legislation. It's difficult to compare my office, which has recommendation power, with an order making power model like the U.K

Information & Ethics committee  Regarding the institutions, the 2015-16 data indicate that there really was a decrease in their performance as to disclosure in 30 days, that is to say the number of files for which a reply was provided in 30 days. That drop was not very big, but there was one. We did, in paralle

Information & Ethics committee  In the case of the Phoenix pay system, we were warned that there were a lot of access to information requests from employees. Normally we receive the complaints later. This time we were warned that there could be many complaints related to access information requests about the Ph

Information & Ethics committee  The way it works is that the staff that is in place absorbs the increase. Every year there is always an event, an incident or complaints related to a given topic that come to the fore. For instance, following the railway accident at Lac-Mégantic, there were a lot of complaints

Information & Ethics committee  I've had no other explanation besides the explanation I've given in the public domain.

Information & Ethics committee  I don't think that order making power on its own will make that much difference in terms of complaints and levels or requests and whatnot. My proposals were 85 recommendations—

Information & Ethics committee  —and they do stand together. This committee made 32 recommendations, and these too stand together as well. Order making power is a key component. I firmly believe in that, but the review of the exemptions and the exclusions in the act is also a key component—a public interest ov

Information & Ethics committee  Every year the government publishes statistics. The detailed statistics were a result of recommendations we made some years ago. Every year, I review all the government statistics and we do an analysis of those. This year, I'll publish that in my annual report, but what we've see