I am not asking for more authority, a broader mandate, or more money for the Public Service Commission. Thank you for letting me clarify that.
What we do at the Public Service Commission is really on a very small scale. What I'm faced with, given the interest and demand—and this came really to the forefront with Mongolia—is how we do this as a country and as a public service. How can we do these things without actually growing any of the other government departments? I certainly don't want to grow the Public Service Commission in this area. I had the same discussion with respect to India: how do we do this?
Certainly, domestically, within the Public Service Commission, there has to be a reliance on other experts and other departments in other parts of government. And I think there is a tremendous opportunity to take advantage of the large group of people who are retiring out of the public service.
We have a retirement rate of executives of about 9%, which we've had for the last few years. That rate is going to continue until about 2013. They're retiring out very young in the public service--that's another debate altogether. The average age is around 58. They still have a lot to contribute. They have a lot of experience. They have a lot to contribute, and they're actually keen to volunteer. Some of them want to make money, but many of them are keen to volunteer. I see a tremendous opportunity, actually, to take advantage of this pool of people who are in good health, are keen to volunteer, and are keen to do things, by connecting it with this demand.
There is a strong demand, and when there's strong demand and mutual interest on the part of the country, and you have a pool of volunteers, there must be some way to put them together. I think there's an opportunity here through things like networks and collaboration. Those are concepts, but you develop the inventories, and people can search the inventories. And probably a small amount of seed money from a place like CIDA or External Affairs would allow the development of plans. There has to be a bit of seed money so that you can travel to these countries and spend time sitting down with them and asking what exactly they think would be helpful and what exactly we can contribute.
I think the discussions you'll have with Ukraine will show how extremely beneficial this is to making progress. So a small amount of seed money is what I would be....
If there really is a mutual interest in pursuing this further, then there are other funding agencies. CIDA is one. The Royal Bank and some development funds and foundations are others. And some of these countries actually have some money they could put toward this. For instance, if you have a lot of natural resources, and you have revenue from natural resources, and this is important to you, you should be making some contribution to this too. It could be in kind, such as by putting staff toward it.