Thank you for the question, and thank you for allowing me the time to respond.
Let's just look at putting somebody at the table to be able to say yes or no, as you put it. When you do that, that simply puts a drag on the whole process. It doesn't allow for the process to carry on naturally.
When we look at the Canada Revenue Agency, which was created in 1999, there were five rounds of very successful bargaining. I sat on the bargaining team in 2007 and 2010. In 2007, after six days of face-to-face negotiations at the bargaining table, we reached a tentative agreement. In 2010, we had five days of face-to-face negotiation at the bargaining table. Last year this government put in the 2012 budget that the CRA must now get its bargaining mandate from the Treasury Board.
Last October the union of taxation employees, which is a component of PSAC, started negotiating. After eight weeks of face-to-face negotiations at the bargaining table, they're still without a deal. That's costing taxpayers money. I don't know how you would explain that.