If I may, Mr. Chair, I'll just add a couple of comments because I think it's an important question.
We are in, as my colleague pointed out, the planning stages right now. There is an opportunity now, as I stated in my opening remarks—and in fact not only an opportunity but a desire—for consultations to take place. I would just clarify that. I'm not so sure that it's accurate to say that there were no consultations, even up until now. In fact, I can't say what Finance would have done in advance of the actual budget, but I do know that the question asked of us was, when did you know about this? We knew about it a couple of days before. But there is an opportunity to consult stakeholders, employees, bargaining agents. It's not unreasonable for that, in my view, to take place now at this stage. In fact, some of that will need to take place after the new department is created as well. There are some elements that we'll focus on to ensure they're immediately addressed, and then some elements that will take some additional time to align.
We use the term “consultations”, and it could mean different things to different people. But I think there's certainly an opportunity for that to happen right now and there's a desire for that to happen, going forward. I think the legislation should give the parameters to move ahead, and I think it does, but I think that's an important point and we'll continue to build on that as we go forward.