I'd like to answer this question, if I may.
Actually, I'd like to give a little bit of history. Going back, I think, to 1997, there were cuts in the public service. In particular, Treasury Board cut Public Works and Government Services Canada. As a result, a lot of the duties were transferred to compensation. Since 1997 we have had a lot more policy changes, a lot more collective agreement changes. There's been pay equity. It's been continuous, a growing number of policies.
If we compare our public service to a provincial one—I looked at the website, for example, for the collective agreement for the City of Ottawa employees, a very basic collective agreement, about five pages long. We have over 72 collective agreements. We have over 70,000 rules and regulations that have occurred over the time of government. And because of all of the departments, because of all the agencies, we have to know crown corporations, pension laws. The former Auditor General, Denis Desautels, wrote about this in 2000, and he wrote that it is one of the worst jobs in the government due to the broad body of dissimilar rules and regulations. So if we compare it to a provincial level, it doesn't work.
If we look back at the pay records of 1970, it was a walk in the park. They came, they arrived, there were no rules and regulations. But as government changed and policies came into play, it got more and more complex over time with all the collective agreements. And this is why we cannot compare it.