We are told that about 60% of the employees in the core public administration do not have enough banked sick leave to cover a full period of short-term disability; that's 13 weeks. Of the employees, 25% have fewer than 10 days of banked sick leave. Many employees, especially new and younger employees, whom I think Mr. Lee was alluding to, have no banked sick days at all. In contrast the select few, long-tenured individuals, including many executives, have far more banked sick days than they will ever reasonably need.
The issue is not.... It's trying to reform a system that's 40 or 60 years out of date. I met with the local president of the CBSA union. I was in a union and on strike at one time. I was in management of a unionized organization. I understand that we're trying to come up with a system that's fair not only today but in the future.
But as Mr. Lee alluded to, if 60% of our younger employees of the future don't have a system in place, then I will ask our public servants' representatives if they could share a little about how the present system compares to the one in the private sector—not that we need to lessen the standards, but that we're trying to modernize them.
Mr. Lee said that the university has a better system in place for younger employees than the public service has today. Maybe you could comment on that, please.