Government Operations committee  Well, you have two things there, right? First, the federal government has allocated the jobs in something that reflects the population. I have a chart that gives me the number of federal public servants in each region and the number of staffing activities. What I don't have is

Government Operations committee  Yes, I'll get that for you.

Government Operations committee  Sure. I will.

Government Operations committee  I think that the most important thing is that all managers and departments to carefully plan their workforce, regardless of whether the employees are permanent, temporary or contract. All of those types of employment can be justified, but there needs to be planning. I would not l

Government Operations committee  We have noted that, when important legislative changes take place, there is little planning involved. We recently assessed human resource planning and have once again noted an improvement. In that report, I indicated to the departments that, during a period of budgetary cuts, it'

Government Operations committee  For the first time, we are seeing a decrease in the proportion of people under the age of 35. Actually, that is one of my worries. In the past, we have noticed that Canada's public service was aging. Employees are currently retiring. When a reduction in that young population beco

Government Operations committee  Yes, we have done a number. We have 82. We're in a cycle. Elizabeth is doing the calculation for me. We are trying to do a seven year cycle—five to seven years—to make sure we visit every organization in that period of time. We're in the third year. Elizabeth?

Government Operations committee  Elizabeth tells me we have done 23.

Government Operations committee  Yes, it is. But I have to say as well that if we think you are an organizations that has some issues and we think there is higher risk, we will put you to the front of the line. So you would expect the earlier ones to actually have had more difficulty.

Government Operations committee  One of the things we tend to forget when we are looking at the public service—and I'm always looking for improvements—is how well regarded we are abroad. We have a very fine public service and can be very proud of it. This is the second year I have seen and remarked on this. We

Government Operations committee  Yes, we are. We run FSWEP, the federal student work experience program. We brought in 8,000 students. We also have a co-op program that we run, through which government brings in people. We have post-secondary recruitment, and even though that number is down—a year before we had

Government Operations committee  No, I don't think so. Actually, we have seen an improvement in how merit is assessed. However, I complain because we still have cases where that assessment is unclear.

Government Operations committee  Five years ago, a major amendment was made to the legislation. The system was completely overhauled. As Ms. Laurendeau said, we have seen some progress. However, there are still issues to address when it comes to applying that definition and assessment standards.

Government Operations committee  Yes, that is always a risk. When the amendments to the legislation and new approaches started being enforced, the Public Service Commission was responsible for a number of staffing services. We have talked about what we would do with those services. In the end, we decided to keep

Government Operations committee  Yes, it has. We put the last numbers in our report. Usually the proportion of executives positions grows, with a little bit of a lag, compared to the rest of the public service. So we've seen quite a bit of growth, and the executive group has grown in the same proportion, with a