NDP MP to challenge Chris Alexander over visa data requests

Further to the earlier post (Minister Alexander helped bureaucrats avoid giving full details on visa wait times), more detail on the amount of work required.

Tend to believe the points made by the parliamentary briefings coordinator: if the data base can’t spit out the information and the data needs to be manipulated (technical use of the term) in Excel, this time required would increase exponentially.

Not necessarily a reason to refuse what is a valid request (an extension could have been requested):

She also warned the massive quantity of data involved would lead to server crashes, thus further delaying the process.

“We estimate that the [temporary resident] population being requested corresponds to upwards of 16,000,000 records,” she wrote.

“The tools currently at our disposal do now yet fully integrate all the TR data and would therefore require substantial amount of manipulation in Excel of a very large amount of data, which regularly results in system crashes and slower processing of requests of this magnitude.”

The next day, Gagnon’s colleague, Amanda Morelli, called off the search.

“You can hold this work — [the minister’s office] has come back to advise ADMO that we will use the same response we provided to Q-359,” Morelli wrote in an internal email — a reference to an earlier reply to a similar written question filed by Liberal MP John McCallum.

NDP MP to challenge Chris Alexander over visa data requests – Politics – CBC News.