Can I start with the good news?
As you recall, the committee took a very direct interest in the human resources state of my office last spring and we said at that time that we were severely understaffed due to a very severe problem of retirement, flow-through, people moving on, etc., in spite of having a fairly generous budget. The figures showed that it was hard to retain employees. At that time my staff and I testified that we had measures in place that would turn those figures around, so I am very happy to tell you that we are now slightly over our quota of employees as requested in the budget. We had about 120 in May and we now have 161, which was our goal.
I'm particularly pleased with the fact that in the various categories where the Government of Canada asks us to make special efforts, we're well over the targets to hire aboriginal people, people with disabilities, and visible minorities. The vast majority of those 124 positions are bilingual positions, so we have a very good cross-section of Canadian society. We did make some progress in the last eight months.
I thank you for your interest, and I think we are in much better shape for the future than we were in a situation of constant staff turnover.