Thank you, Chair, and thank you for appearing and for your comments. I have a couple of questions and then I'll leave it to the official critic.
One of the suggestions you made--not that I necessarily disagree with it, but I would like to discuss it a bit--is that question of appointing without competition staff who have worked in the minister's office for three years, and that question of perception of fairness or of competition. For argument's sake, I would challenge that they did have a competition. I would argue that these employees, these exempt staff, did go through competitions. They went through competitions to get hired in the minister's office. They survived three years of competition to maintain that position, which is a very difficult area of work.