Government Operations committee  As I already mentioned, we do not have many concrete examples, except for the investigations we conducted, and those appear in our annual reports. They were investigations we initiated further to complaints.We received complaints calling into question certain activities. However

Government Operations committee  England's and Australia's public service commissions are responsible not just for public servants, but also for the senior officials to whom those public servants report. I am not saying that is necessarily the solution. We could set up a commission dedicated to public appointmen

Government Operations committee  I do not want more power to denounce any practices. In my view, it is more important to establish a system that gives parliamentarians and Canadians assurance that all appointments are based solely on merit, not partisanship. That is key.

Government Operations committee  We are continuing to do audits. I think it's an important part of the delegation system and the manner that we're overseeing that delegation system. We will have another set of audits ready for October. This is a slow process in terms of getting departments and agencies to chang

Government Operations committee  I'm reluctant to give concrete examples of things that I haven't examined in detail. When you look at things in more detail, you realize that it maybe isn't quite what it appears. The comment is based on how the appointments are made in the senior positions. When you look at all

Government Operations committee  This is another area in which we've made some really good progress. I've always been worried about people coming indirectly into the public service, because there's a tendency then to hire people who are often local. It tends to advantage people in Ottawa. It tends to advantage p

Government Operations committee  It's a great place, but they don't have the same advantage, so we have been working with the Clerk of the Privy Council and their renewal objective to ensure that we had more direct hiring into the public service, and we've accomplished that. There has been a significant increase

Government Operations committee  Absolutely.

Government Operations committee  Originally the commission had three full-time members. I think they were deputy level, so they were three very senior people. You had to have the staff to support those three very senior people, and it was during the time that the commission was actually making all the executive

Government Operations committee  The report talks about how important it is for managers in the public service to plan effectively, not only in terms of the permanent workforce, but also in terms of contractors and temporary help agencies. Planners must have a good idea of the proportions and the budgetary alloc

Government Operations committee  The reason for the comment in the report was that when we started out in 2005, there was an expectation that everything would be completely delegated and that the central services that had been provided by the commission would actually just slowly fade away. That's turned out not

Government Operations committee  They were just as accessible to us as they are to everyone else. We did not do an audit. We did not do an in-depth analysis, because that is not really part of our mandate. I received information from the Privy Council Office on the advertisement process and the procedure they fo

Government Operations committee  It is in our report to Parliament. The government is in the process of assessing the act, as required. The five-year statutory review will give Parliament an opportunity to discuss and debate the current act. We feel that input is a key part of the discussion.

Government Operations committee  Yes. I have discussions with ministers for every report. I did speak with the Privy Council. They do not fully agree with us, as far as this recommendation goes. I should make one thing very clear. The Governor-in-Council makes approximately 3,000 appointments. But this pertains

Government Operations committee  That is an area the committee may wish to explore. The PSC is required to examine the core public service. Our comments pertain to that group. Once we made that clear, our position was better received. We can debate the appointments of deputy ministers and deputy heads, but I d