As you may or may not know, PIPSC represents about 10,000 chartered accountants at the Canada Revenue Agency. They've been able educate me on it, and hopefully I can give that to you as well.
The $900 million plus the additional $250 million in the subsequent two years actually represents about $1.4 billion. That amount represents the accounting value of the entire sick leave bank. Essentially what they're saying is that they're going to retain the accounting value of the $5.2 billion sick leave bank of accumulated sick leave for their members. It means that they're essentially trying to eliminate the bank through legislation. But the bank forms a part of our collective agreements, and, as we mentioned, we are rarely replaced when we're off sick.
You can call it a liability—that might be an accounting term—but it really is an insurance policy for public servants when they need their sick leave. In most cases, many of them leave a lot of this bank behind when they retire. There's no ability to somehow cash out or retain that leave upon retirement.
The number is not an amount at all. It's a bank of sick leave that is not likely to get used, and, even if it does get used, doesn't represent a cost for government. Therefore, eliminating it doesn't represent a savings for government.