Information & Ethics committee  They would know they have the right to indicate to anyone in the delegation chain if asked who the requester is, because that person up top is the one who is accountable for the administration of it. That includes the administration and the safeguarding of the information. Even if that minister does get it, that minister is still bound by the privacy legislation that exists.

Information & Ethics committee  That's a--

Information & Ethics committee  We have no statistics on that whatsoever. It's not information we have tried to gather and it's not information that comes our way. We're not aware that it's a regular practice. On the other hand, it's not something we are surveying on.

Information & Ethics committee  If I can clarify, Mr. Chair, in terms of the delegated instruments, the delegation and how it flows there, it's very clear that because the person higher on the chain is the one who's actually responsible and accountable, even if it's been delegated, then implicitly there's a knowledge of it.

Information & Ethics committee  The ATIP officers very clearly would know what their rights and obligations are under the access to information legislation and the privacy legislation.

Information & Ethics committee  Mr. Chair, in response to that, as a public servant, my duty and my obligation is to administer the laws and the legislation as passed by Parliament.

Information & Ethics committee  That's correct, Mr. Chair. You're entirely correct to say that "consistent" , as you read it there, is sort of a loaded word. That probably means something, and your highlighting of the translation brings that to the fore. One of the purposes then of the training we do for new coordinators, and that would happen on the job....

Information & Ethics committee  Mr. Chair, we would be very pleased to respond to the honourable member's question on that. There were, we believe, over 400 people--some of them possibly multiple attendees--who last year attended some of the regular training courses that we put on. We have a cycling series of subjects.

Information & Ethics committee  We believe that training, communication, and working with our professional ATIP community and reminding them of their obligations and the procedures through which they happen are the best ways, from where we sit within Treasury Board Secretariat, of ensuring that the legislation and the various regulations and guidelines under it are respected.

Information & Ethics committee  Mr. Chair, that particular paragraph raised by the honourable member is referring to the e-mail and the subsequent press coverage and so on that Mr. Kenney raised in that particular e-mail there.

Information & Ethics committee  That's correct, with the name of Bronskill.

Information & Ethics committee  In all of our experience we see this as a very remote case, and the Privacy Commissioner is doing the investigation into that.

Information & Ethics committee  This is the only case that has been brought to our attention in our role of administering the policy.

Information & Ethics committee  What we're not aware of and what we don't hear of when we talk to ATIP coordinators is that information of requesters is being shared on any sort of regular basis. In fact, we're not aware that the name of the requester goes to the minister. Theoretically, it is possible that it could go there.

Information & Ethics committee  It should not ever go through the minister or go through the minister's staff on the way to the minister, for example. In our experience--and I think Mr. Lemieux could expand on this a bit more--this is not something that in any way is a widespread practice. But Mr. Lemieux--