Thank you. I'm happy to come back to the committee at any time, and I'm prepared to come on short notice, to talk about any of these issues, so just keep me on your list if you want to follow up with something. If I'm not available, my staff would certainly be available to you.
Concerning phantom positions, we are very concerned too. What we have in Bill C-2 is a tightening up of the kind of flow you see between ministerial exempt staff and the public service. But what you did in Bill C-2 was reduce the ability of exempt staff to go into the public service on a priority basis. In other words, they have to compete, and they can compete in internal competitions. I was comfortable with that proposition.
What we didn't look at was the flow the other way. Over the last eleven years we've had about 250 people come from the exempt staff on a priority basis into the public service, but we've also had 100 public servants work in exempt staff status; we've had that kind of movement as well.
So I believe we've dealt with part of it. We haven't dealt with the other part.