With respect to the elimination of the Public Appointments Commission and the closure of the secretariat that had been established to support an eventual commission, this will not have an impact on the government's commitment to make qualified appointments that are following rigorous, open, and competency-based selection processes. So a lot of the improvements that the commission would have made if it had been established have already been made. For example, as I mentioned, the leadership and full-time positions are publicly advertised. We have selection criteria that are identified. It's a competency-based process and we have a fairly rigorous process that we put in place.
Another example is for part-time positions. For example, on crown corporation boards there have been profiles developed for each organization that help ministers and officials determine what the skill sets are that are required by that board. These board profiles are posted on the public website. So when a vacancy comes up the board profile would identify what skills are needed in order to strengthen the board and the governance by the board, and these are the profiles that are used now in order to identify what appropriate potential candidates the minister should be recommending to the Governor in Council.
Overall, I would say that there's certainly a lot more rigour and a lot more transparency in the appointments process, which is what the commission was originally established to achieve. So the government, in determining savings as part of this budget, determined that given the improvements and the savings that could be achieved, the elimination of the commission was appropriate at this time.