Thank you very much.
I'll speak from the experience within our region, because it's practical and I know it.
We have two major federal employers in my riding. One is Veterans Affairs in Kirkland Lake. Then we have CPP and old age security; that's handled out of Timmins.
I've always tried to get a clear sense of how departments set their criteria. I often find it's like calling Darth Vader and seeing if he'll go out for a coffee with me to get a clear answer on these decisions.
In the Kirkland Lake office we find a very low turnover of employees—very low. People are committed to it. It's basically a way of life. People, once they're in the federal civil service, stay. In Veterans Affairs they bid on contracts. They're not just doing a regional service; they're actually able to branch out and bid on contracts across Canada, and they're very successful at it.
We find that in our human resources department, on the other hand, we always seem to be taking the overflow work from big centres like Scarborough. If someone retires, the position is not necessarily replaced. I'm trying to get a sense of why it would be more efficient to be continually putting resources into a very large centre like Scarborough, where there is going to be a much higher turnover rate, than into a city like Timmins, where these people are committed to it. We can never get a sense of the criteria for deciding where to apportion the workload.
You said that it's within each department, and I noticed that in one of your statements you said the deputy heads have substantial authority. What criteria must they meet to ensure the public is getting good bang for the buck—that the jobs are going to places where we aren't going to have high turnover? Is that a factor they even have to consider?