Information & Ethics committee  Not generally.

Information & Ethics committee  The answer is yes.

Information & Ethics committee  Internally, we have begun to develop some idea of this. We started on it quite seriously a few months ago. Then, when the form in which this legislation would pass became less clear, along with the time when it would be passed, we put the matter aside for the moment. It's my und

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, we have done that. Assuming the bill passes in the form in which the House passed it in the first place, our estimates are that it would be somewhere between $2 million and $3 million.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, that figure included the notion that there would be one office to cover public office holders, the members, and the Senate. If the Senate were not included—I'm referring to one of the amendments—that number would go down.

Information & Ethics committee  As I said in response to Mr. Peterson, we're not having problems recruiting at the moment. There's a potential issue, but Bill C-2 will make that far easier than it has been up till now. I'm not prepared to say whether there'd be much of an increase in personnel. I'll try to giv

Information & Ethics committee  No, I feel we're being adequately supported. I don't have any demands other than the ones I've presented.

Information & Ethics committee  No. I referred to this year as an anchor year simply because I feel the office has matured and has sufficient resources for its needs under the current legislation, so I'm quite satisfied.

Information & Ethics committee  My own sense is that the 8% for next year is itself a high figure relative to the others at the moment, but it relates to two memoranda of understanding that we finally have negotiated with the House of Commons and the Library. That should put us in the right position for future

Information & Ethics committee  If they occur at all, the future problems will relate to the question of what is the end result of the Federal Accountability Act. That, of course, has consequences for this and many other offices, and those will have to be dealt with when that time comes.

Information & Ethics committee  It's difficult for me to assess how successful my office has been. There are a number of aspects of the work that I think have been extremely well done. But it's like any new office: if you go about three years, you make mistakes as you go along and you learn from them, hopefully

Information & Ethics committee  That's how it has turned out.

Information & Ethics committee  That is correct, and that is why, since then, we haven't done that. I hate to promise that it will never happen in the future, because it depends on the context, how many investigations there are, and what our own personnel resources are. We have tried to keep the legal services

Information & Ethics committee  We have members of the staff who are lawyers in the sense that law is their educational background. We have no one on the staff--

Information & Ethics committee  That's correct.