Information & Ethics committee  Unfortunately, given how long it currently takes to process a complaint, I'm sure complainants are happy to receive a response. However, since they don't obtain the response until a year and a half or two years later, the information or records received may not be as relevant. My

Information & Ethics committee  We do that, of course, but it's unfortunate. I don't want things to get to that point. I don't want to have to call complainants to ask whether they still want the information in question since they asked for it eight months ago. I'd like us to be able to call the complainant im

Information & Ethics committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair and committee members. I am pleased to be here with you today. As you said, Mr. Chair, I am joined by France Labine and Layla Michaud. I now have 15 months under my belt as the new Information Commissioner, and at this point in my mandate, I see very positi

Information & Ethics committee  We have 3,500 old complaints right now in the backlog and in the inventory.

Information & Ethics committee  Right now, with the $3 million extra that we have, we are floating just equally with what we have coming in and what we are finishing. I'm receiving about 2,500 complaints a year and this year we closed 2,600.

Information & Ethics committee  Plus $3 million.

Information & Ethics committee  It keeps going up. From 2014 to date, we started with 1,700 complaints a year, and now we're at about 2,400 to 2,500 a year.

Information & Ethics committee  It's very difficult to know. My office calculated we would need approximately $9 million in one year to hire all the investigators necessary to get rid of the backlog. Even if we were to do that, the institutions would not be able to absorb the extra workload. We need a continu

Information & Ethics committee  It's just at the end of the year.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, it would be in my inventory when I start the year.

Information & Ethics committee  The oldest is 2007.

Information & Ethics committee  It's a very complex file, yes.

Information & Ethics committee  We have 500 cases, and we have less than that now. I think we reduced it to 300 that are previous to 2015. Am I correct?

Information & Ethics committee  That was my priority this year. I wanted to get rid of all the old files previous to 2015. The problem with those cases is that most of them are special delegations, national security cases, consultations with other countries, provinces, etc. There's a lot of complexity to these

Information & Ethics committee  That's the plan. We're going to be attacking the backlog with a special team starting this year. We also have an early intervention team we just put in place last year, and it is doing the new cases as they come in. Hopefully, we'll reduce half the backlog.