Again, thank you for being here.
I want to start with the $24.9 million that is being sought by various departments and agencies “to strengthen internal capacity to address human resources and pay administration issues”. Is a lot of that specifically aimed at trying to cure some of the problems with the Phoenix pay system?
I'm the critic for national parks and I've heard from individuals who weren't getting paid at all, including students trying to go back to university. I've heard from people who were paid in the following year, which increased their tax bracket because they didn't get paid in the proper year. I've heard from people who were overpaid by, let's say, $1,000, and of course you only see about $700 on your paycheque because of the deductions, but government wants $1,000 back from those people. I don't know how you recover your deductions from all the various departments to get your $300 back from those departments.
Is that specifically what this is for? Is it to try to deal with the Phoenix cases, which are extreme in national parks, certainly, because of the variety of the job positions they have there, and perhaps in the other departments as well?