Government Operations committee  Monitoring the compensation part is more in the realm of the Treasury Board Secretariat, in terms of competitive rates for this job versus that job, and so on. This is more about how you can facilitate and ease recruitment into the public service, and once you have people there,

Government Operations committee  There are some processes where there are 6,000 to 7,000 Canadians applying for single opportunities. It's quite remarkable, the number—

Government Operations committee  Some would be screened out.

Government Operations committee  Most people don't like working in a situation where you face any number of rules to be able to get your job done, and over time these things build up in response to various perceived or real crises and so on. The whole idea now is to reduce the number of rules, generally speaki

Government Operations committee  Yes, I'd be happy to. There are really two elements. One is faster recruiting and staffing internally, within the public service, so that as departments define their needs and do their long-term planning they have more flexibility to get people into jobs quicker.

Government Operations committee  One of the things we're finding, which we actually have as one element of the public service renewal action plan for this year, is that we need to increase the number of post-secondary recruits from universities by about 900, up to a total of 3,000 this year. One of the things

Government Operations committee  The additional funding we're seeking will support communication with public servants concerning their rights under this act and the way to exercise those rights. That concludes my opening remarks.

Government Operations committee  I do, in fact.

Government Operations committee  Would you like me to go ahead now?

Government Operations committee  Okay. I will be brief. Good afternoon, and thank you, Madam Chair. I'm pleased to appear before your committee today to discuss the 2007-08 supplementary estimates for the Canada Public Service Agency. As mentioned earlier, I'm accompanied by Ginette Sylvestre, our senior f

Government Operations committee  I just wanted to say that I agree entirely with what you're suggesting. What we've tried to do today, and it's probably just touching the surface, is demonstrate that we are serious about looking at what the real issue is and at whether there is an issue. We aren't ignoring anecd

Government Operations committee  It makes perfect sense. That's why I'm saying that I agree entirely with you. We are looking at all those initiatives.

Government Operations committee  I'll try to answer one part, and for sure we'll come back to update you on progress. On the whole issue of the health of the staff who performed these functions across the public service in every department, what I was trying to outline is how we're trying to improve and rebuild

Government Operations committee  The compensation community is the group of people directly related to paying people or dealing with their benefits.

Government Operations committee  Yes. Those are the 2,100 folks I was talking about.