Information & Ethics committee  That would be your job.

Information & Ethics committee  I guess if you're looking at the intent of the act, is it part of the intent of the act that any government provides information that can be used for resale? Myself, I doubt that would be the intent of the act.

Information & Ethics committee  People who live abroad and are not Canadians citizens have to use a representative in Canada. They hire them and pay for their services.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, they charge more than that. However, to be fair, I should remind you that consultants and lawyers add their own opinion and provide more context. They provide much more information than we do following an investigation. The prices vary greatly.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, we occasionally get what would be deemed frivolous and vexatious requests, and on those here's what we try to do. The ATIP analyst has permission, the right, to go back to the requester and try to clarify what the request is, particularly when they're asking for what looks l

Information & Ethics committee  Overall, we accept far more applications than we refuse, so right away, you're only seeing a small percentage of those applicants, for either permanent immigration or temporary immigration. When that's all you see, that skews the perspective, and it seems that we spend our days s

Information & Ethics committee  As Michael referred to earlier, I think that if we were to have close to two million temporary visa requests a year, you can see right away that there will be a number in there. We even have people doing requests for information on visas that were accepted, because they want to k

Information & Ethics committee  We have a very close relationship with not only the Information Commissioner but also the Privacy Commissioner. As we approach every ATIP request, we have in mind what the act requires and what our obligations are. Our training and our awareness are dedicated to making sure that

Information & Ethics committee  I'm sorry. On that one I just don't have enough information to be able to comment, and the secretariat would be coordinating for all of government.

Information & Ethics committee  I think the Treasury Board Secretariat, as my colleague has mentioned, is looking into all of those things. What is always best in terms of oversight—and I speak more generally here—is that those doing the oversight are very familiar with the source of the information and with th

Information & Ethics committee  We are in constant discussions with the secretariat over what we would like to see, because I think it's fair to say that we all have views on what we would like to see in the act, but what would apply well in my department is not necessarily something that would be useful across

Information & Ethics committee  It has increased, but not exponentially.

Information & Ethics committee  There would certainly be challenges.

Information & Ethics committee  The department has about 7,000 employees. If we are 70-odd dealing with ATIPs full-time as analysts, it is a very small number. It does not include, however, the staff within the department who would be reacting to ATIP requests on a daily basis; that is, doing their own searches

Information & Ethics committee  Anything that would increase the volume of requests would be a challenge for us. As I said earlier, I do not think that we would be seeing an increase in available funding to be able to deal with them, so we would need to look at other ways of doing business.