Government Operations committee  There is a quick answer, if you wish. Once we launch the investigation, we meet with the discloser to get all of the information that we can to help us go forward. The discloser is never an acting player in the investigation. You do not become part of our investigation—

Government Operations committee  Thank you, Chair. I just want to inform the committee that within the reprisal regime, once an investigation is launched, our investigation service standard foresees one year to complete it. In the case of reprisals, there is a human impact. There is a human cost to the person t

Government Operations committee  The percentage falls within roughly 20% to 25% again. Once again, when we go through the process, the analyst team looks at all the information that is provided to us, and there are numerous reasons we would not move forward. Sometimes the person will tell us they have not made a

Government Operations committee  In the case of disclosures, we investigate approximately 25% of the disclosures made to us. To that effect, there are a number of discretions the commissioner has to refuse to move forward with investigations. Ten per cent of those are considered to have been adequately dealt w

Government Operations committee  I take a lot of calls and I provide a lot of information to potential whistleblowers. In my experience, people come to us directly. They do not go to a department first, they come to us simply because they trust the Office of the Commissioner. That has been my experience over the

Government Operations committee  In terms of section 34, if people are not part of the public service, we have no power to require them to provide us with documents or testimony in an investigation. However, we ask them if they can co-operate with us by providing documents voluntarily. That is the approach we ha

Government Operations committee  Using the well-known mechanism provides them with the protection of the act. For them, for the disclosure to come forward, and where the commissioner's decision is not to investigate, because it would be better dealt with internally....

Government Operations committee  We have statistics on how many times the commissioner uses paragraph 24(1)(f), which is having a valid reason not to investigate. Yes, we do. The statistics on this is that 47% of the cases where the commissioner chose not to investigate is due to that paragraph.

Government Operations committee  A breakdown of each one of the different...? No. We have it under each one of the different reasons that it is not sufficiently important or has been adequately dealt with. For a decision-making process, we have statistics on that, yes. Within paragraph 24(1)(f), we do not at t

Government Operations committee  Thank you. One of the most important aspects of the act is confidentiality and in support of confidentiality the act contains several obligations. One of them that falls on the commissioner and the chief executive is to protect the identity of persons involved in the disclosure