I'd be happy to consider this a briefing and come back to answer any of your questions.
On the phantom positions, I am reluctant to give names. If you put me in camera and tell me to give you the names, I will give you the names. I am here to serve you.
On the national area of selection part of your question, the way the current legislation stands, it gives discretion to the Public Service Commission to allow a geographic limit on a competition. That means you can hold a competition and you can say you will accept applications only from a certain geographic area. Members of Parliament have been very concerned about that. The reason it is there is to try to manage volume. I have gotten the message. This is not something that people, certainly on the Hill, like to have, although for public servants it's a lot easier for them to manage their processes.
What we have done is to incrementally put in place a broadening out of this area of selection by saying, “No, you can't limit it geographically; it must be for all of Canada.” That has been the case for all executive positions: the assistant deputy ministers, directors general, directors, and one or two levels under that. Now we've taken it down for the national capital area. There was a lot of concern about the jobs in Ottawa.
When we say “officer level” we are excluding the clerical and labouring-level jobs. We've started with the officer level in the national capital. Next April we'll be doing it for all across the country. We hope to have all the national area of selections done by December 2007.