The $7.5 million represents the cost to operate our job application system when people apply for jobs through our website.
Indeed, the staffing system costs money. I thought about the question you asked last time regarding the use of staffing agencies to hire temporary staff. In an organization as large as the public service, our role is to recruit temporary workers to meet the demands. However, what concerns me is whether it really is a temporary job to respond to an urgent situation. Is it really a short-term situation? Is that really the intended use? I have some concerns in that regard.
That is one way to hire people. We have figures demonstrating this. That is therefore one way to enter the public service. However, that is definitely not fair to other Canadians who would like to have the opportunity to access the public service.
I have another concern: do those employees operate like public servants? If they play the same role as public servants, that is not good either, because they are not really public servants, but rather employees of an agency. You are quite right to say there are some concerns.
I asked my examiners, the people who study and monitor the delegation systems, to look at how we could obtain more information about this kind of work.