Thank you, Mr. Chair.
The mandate is set out in our legislation. We exist as one body with two arms of operation. One is the acceptance, review, investigation, and reporting to Parliament of founded cases of wrongdoing. The other is the acceptance, review, and investigation of complaints of reprisal, which can then be referred to the tribunal I mentioned earlier.
That mandate, I think, is clearly set out in the legislation. There are specific practical issues also set out in the legislation. For example, if another process is already under way, we are barred from acting on it. If, for example, in a reprisal case, a complainant has filed a grievance, we cannot act on it. So there's a structure, certainly, within the act, that goes to what we can and can't do, and there are certain procedural issues as well. Also, there are indications in the act, for example, that we are to conduct all our investigations on both reprisals and disclosures as expeditiously and as informally as possible.
That has resulted, in my view, and based on my experience, in a very high number of cases that we do not deal with for any of those reasons. For example, if we feel that the Human Rights Tribunal or the Human Rights Commission would be more appropriate, we would not seek to duplicate the Human Rights Commission's process. Rather, we would respect that and try to avoid duplication of process, expense, and the possibility of conflicting decisions.