Thank you, Madam Chair.
I wish to thank Ms. Barrados, Ms. Gobeil and Mr. Lemaire for joining us once again. We much appreciate your presence here.
Ms. Barrados, as you well know, it is not my intention to try to catch you off guard. In the highlights contained in a document that was provided to us in October 2006, it is stated that there was a majority of organizations that were ready to assume delegated authority. In your opening statement, you give us a bit of a warning. You are honest and you say that: “Many departments and agencies lack the human resources capacity and expertise necessary to staff under the new regime.“
You say “many“, without indicating whether there are 14 or 22 of them. Could you give me an order of magnitude? Is this something you mention because it continues to worry you?
Secondly, when all of the implementation efforts were made, my impression — and please correct me if I am wrong — was that with delegation of authority there would also be the necessary resourcing. The latter is perhaps in the right balance, but perhaps it was taken away from you through a reduction of your budget, given that there was no delegation in this area.
Do these departments and agencies have the necessary funding? Was this situation to be expected? If not, is it due to other factors? This could cause recruitment problems. I have been told by several union representatives that in the area of human resources this or that department did not have the necessary resourcing to take care of payroll or other things.
You also say that you are working with Treasury Board in order to find a funding solution. You will understand that that ties in with my previous question. Is this because you were too generous with the transfer of funds? I am not saying this to be cynical, but jokingly.
I will limit myself to those questions for now. I will then have further questions regarding one of my favourite subjects, namely official languages.