Mr. Chairman, I consider that to be a compliment, coming from Mr. Guimond.
In answer to the first question, I would say that training is given primarily in French, simply because of the number of Francophones and Anglophones in the House. I am also in a position to confirm that most of the resources are devoted to training members of Parliament, as opposed to staff. I will obtain the specific numbers in that respect and forward them to the Committee clerk.
With respect to your question about succession planning, I very clearly recall your comments and our lengthy discussion. I personally experienced the tragedy of Major General Cloutier's illness and death, and I consider this to be a very high priority, particularly since, because of the demographics within the House of Commons, as an institution, as is the case all across the public sector, we will soon be facing a wave of retirements that require us to do some planning.
We avoid situations where heirs apparent await someone's departure. Behind the key positions, we want to establish a pool of people who can succeed the incumbents — in other words, two or three people who will be in a position to apply for the job and occupy the position of someone who has decided to retire.
For example, in a very specialized area such as procedure, many procedural clerks will be retiring. Because we began generally recruiting procedural clerks four years ago, we already have new employees in place who are working and have some knowledge of the House of Commons. They will be in a position to replace a committee clerk when he or she retires, rather than continuing to act as assistant committee clerk.
This year, we lost a senior clerk and filled that position by means of a competition. The individual in question will be leaving at the end of June; there will be two months of overlap to ensure appropriate knowledge transfer. That will free up an assistant senior clerk position. Two assistant senior clerks have left the House of Commons to take jobs elsewhere. We will also be filling those positions in the coming days.
With respect to informatics, we are luckier because our staff is much younger. However, we do expect to lose about 22 per cent of our management staff. There again, we have introduced programs, department by department, to identify people with potential. We want to provide them with training, send them on courses or give them responsibility for special projects that will test them and allow us to ascertain their future potential.
So, I would say that things are on the right track.