This is my first external on-line chat as Acting Undersecretary and I look forward to your thoughts and questions. Let's get started. The issue with respect to the Public Search facilities is one that we will deal with in the future.
Legislation requires public hearings before any decisions are made or steps taken.
With respect to the examiner search files, if we are able to implement the agreement with our union, they will be phased out over the next few years. This decrease has been increasing at a dramatic rate for the past several months. The rate of increase has eased up a bit. However, we still have more applications coming in this year than last year. This may give us an opportunity to catch up on some of our backlogs and, at this time, we are able to deal with the impact on our fee income.