Refine by MP, party, committee, province, or result type.
Information & Ethics committee I don't know. Not long.
November 1st, 2006Committee meeting
Bernard Shapiro
Information & Ethics committee The answer is yes.
November 1st, 2006Committee meeting
Bernard Shapiro
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.
November 1st, 2006Committee meeting
Bernard Shapiro
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 understanding that Treasury Board has set aside a sum of money for the implementation of Bill C-2—not just for our office, but for all affected offices—and we'll have to request funds from that source when the time comes.
November 1st, 2006Committee meeting
Bernard Shapiro
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.
November 1st, 2006Committee meeting
Bernard Shapiro
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 give you some idea of why the costs are high, other than the inclusion of the Senate, which may or may not occur.
November 1st, 2006Committee meeting
Bernard Shapiro
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.
November 1st, 2006Committee meeting
Bernard Shapiro
Information & Ethics committee No, I feel we're being adequately supported. I don't have any demands other than the ones I've presented.
November 1st, 2006Committee meeting
Bernard Shapiro
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 speaking, and then you move forward.
November 1st, 2006Committee meeting
Bernard Shapiro
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 years.
November 1st, 2006Committee meeting
Bernard Shapiro
Information & Ethics committee That's how it has turned out.
November 1st, 2006Committee meeting
Bernard Shapiro
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.
November 1st, 2006Committee meeting
Bernard Shapiro
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 limited, in a sense, to getting opinions about the legality of this, that, or the other thing, rather than conducting an investigation itself.
November 1st, 2006Committee meeting
Bernard Shapiro
Information & Ethics committee Not generally speaking, no.
November 1st, 2006Committee meeting
Bernard Shapiro
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--
November 1st, 2006Committee meeting
Bernard Shapiro