Information & Ethics committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. If you are interested in figures, you can turn to page 14, where you will find a breakdown, by category, of currently registered lobbyists. I should tell you at the outset that the Office of the Registrar of Lobbyists keeps two kinds of statistics: the number of registrations and the number of lobbyists.

Information & Ethics committee  Every day, members of our staff receive some 20 calls from people who set out their individual situation and ask us to help them define it. We do provide answers, but we have to be cautious. On the whole, our approach is to explain the content of the legislation, as well as the requirements in the regulations, without necessarily issuing an opinion on their individual situations.

Information & Ethics committee  I would say that right now we're running on time. We passed the peak of renewals about a month ago. Mr. Nelson mentioned that renewals tended to peak because they were all synchronized when the modified act came into force. That is slowly changing over time. They're being dispersed over time.

Information & Ethics committee  As Mr. Nelson was saying, there are three types of lobbyists. There is a very legitimate reason for that: the legislator, in its wisdom, decided that it would be easier to describe the activities lobbyists are involved in by putting these lobbyists into three categories. The most common, the one we think about the most often, is the consultant-lobbyist.