Public Accounts committee  Right.

Public Accounts committee  Exactly. Those who continue on and achieve their CPA are automatically hired. Everyone who is hired as a performance auditor would have a two-year development program and would become....

Public Accounts committee  When I say the “students”, it's a development program.

Public Accounts committee  I can answer that. We do an employment equity report every year of the four under-represented groups protected under the Canadian Human Rights Act. As you know, the statistics on women are very good. When it comes to persons with handicaps, visible minorities, and indigenous people, we meet the market availability in all of the groups, with the exception of visible minorities, where we're slightly below.

Public Accounts committee  That's a good question. I don't think it is, because—

Public Accounts committee  One of our main intakes of new employees is our student recruiting, where we recruit right out of university, meaning new people with a new master's degree—

Public Accounts committee  At this time?

Public Accounts committee  What I can tell you is that every year we examine our retention level, and it has remained generally stable year after year. I don't have statistics about the year that ended March 31, but it is about the same thing every year. So we did not see departures.

Public Accounts committee  We were quite lucky, because one of our teams, made up of our employees, handles the pay service. When Phoenix was implemented some time ago, we realized that this had greatly changed the pay operations. We increased the number of people who work in that department by 40% in order to ensure that things would be done properly.

Public Accounts committee  As you know, there are three aspects you must master to be perfectly bilingual and speak both languages fluently: oral communication, and reading and writing. Some people may have a bit more trouble reaching the CBC level. When we say that a principal has not reached the necessary level, that probably involves only one of those aspects, and it does not mean that he or she is not able to do the work on a daily basis.

Public Accounts committee  Regarding the distribution between men and women, women make up 62.5% of our work force.

Public Accounts committee  In order to have a balance, we would need to have more men.

Public Accounts committee  It's exactly the case of what Mr. Ferguson was saying. We hired 55 people last year, and 26 of them were at the entry level. At the entry level, we request that our candidates are proficient in either English or French. In fact, we do not require bilingualism at the entry level of the audit trainee program.