We have quorum, so I am going to call the meeting to order.
Before we deal with our witness, I want to talk about the newly appointed public sector integrity commissioner-to-be. This person, as you know, is an appointee of Parliament, and I think it would be a good thing if we were to ask her to appear before our committee on Thursday.
This office was created approximately two or two and a half years ago. It's taken some time to get to this point, so we're pretty pleased to have it. Basically this is the office the public sector will have access to for whistle-blowing protection, and it's Madame Christiane Ouimet. If the committee is in favour, I would suggest that we have her to our committee on Thursday, if she can come. If the committee is willing, we could have it televised. Is that okay? Perhaps we can get the clerk to ask her if she's available.
I want to tell the committee that we did approach the Clerk of the Privy Council to appear before the committee on the issue of pay. They cannot appear on Thursday; we know we have that spot, so we think it's appropriate to have Madame Ouimet. We will see whether there is someone from his office who can come before us the following week. We'll keep working on this because it's an issue that concerns all our employees, and we want to make sure they get paid on time.
We will go on now with our study on the demographic challenges of the federal public service. We have before us Judith MacBride-King, who is the principal of MacBride-King and Associates.
Normally we allow 10 to 15 minutes for a presentation and then we open it for questions.
As you know, there's a great concern over whether there will be enough trained people to take our places when we all retire.