Thank you, Madam Chair.
I appreciate your coming in this afternoon. We certainly appreciate your perspective. We've had a number of different perspectives as we've gone through this--I guess I wouldn't call it necessarily an inquiry--looking for information. We certainly don't want to see what's happened out west happen in the federal government.
I'm from a riding in Alberta, and unfortunately even the federal government is now experiencing some difficulty in attracting employees. I know of one specific situation. I know that Canada Post is a crown corporation, at arm's length. I'm sure that you don't have much to do with them, but they've actually had to close a post office permanently, because they were unable to find people who would work for the wages that were offered. Without question, nobody expected this five years ago even, never mind ten years ago, and we don't want to see the federal government come into this type of situation.
I know that Mr. Poilievre is the one who initiated this discussion. We look down the road and certainly don't want to see our generation and our children's generation having to face this major crisis if it isn't looked at. We do appreciate your attention to it.
I know that Madam Barrados had expressed that she was certain that there wasn't a problem--certainly not in the immediate term, but maybe not in the longer term--based on the number of applications that were coming in. I would just implore you to reconsider that methodology, because you know as well as I do that those applications wouldn't come in if all those people got a job. Next week that draw may dry up. For sure, there has to be some other type of mechanism in terms of identifying the possibility of a crisis out there.
The chair has even talked about this, with regard to some of the possible inefficiencies within the federal government. Often many of us, especially MPs, hear from constituents and experience ourselves the problem with red tape, or whatever you call it--bureaucracy--and possibly inefficiencies between different groups.
Just looking at the different arms of our human resources department within the federal government, of course, we have PSHRMAC, which you represent, and then we have the Public Service Commission of Canada, and then we have the Treasury Board Secretariat, and we have the Canada School of Public Service. I know that they each have their own identified mandates and their responsibilities. Then beyond that, we also have the temp agencies that provide the federal government with public servants as well, at least on a term basis.
I'm concerned—and I'd like your comments on this—that we're losing valuable information. I guess I should say, in addition to all of these, we also have all the HR departments within the crown corporations and the different departments. With all of this and all these different groups, are we experiencing the same types of inefficiencies and red tape and bureaucracy in our HR experience as we are in some of the other departments? If so, what information might we be losing? Where one group might be experiencing a crisis, and if the right hand is experiencing a crisis and the left hand doesn't know what's going on, I can just see that this might explode, and we might be in a real situation by having these inefficiencies.
Would you concur that there are possibly some inefficiencies because there are so many different people doing similar activities?