Thank you, Madam Chair.
Good afternoon, Ms. Barrados. Welcome to the Committee. It is always a pleasure to see you here.
I want to congratulate you. You have done a lot of work. The documents can be heavy to carry. They are heavy in terms of weight, but also in terms of content.
I am going to pick up where my colleague left off. My understanding is that in the various departments where you went to check for compliance with the Public Service Employment Act, you realized that appointments were not being made on the basis of merit. At the Immigration and Refugee Board in particular, there is preferential treatment. Unadvertised appointment processes are common in almost every department and especially in the department responsible for infrastructures.
The merit principle was also not respected. At Health Canada, there are many cases of non-compliance with the Public Service Employment Act. There are irregularities in appointments and related decisions. There is also evidence that human resources plans are lacking in some places, are not very apporpriate, are not updated in other departments and finally that there is a lack of consistency in human resources plans in the Public Service. That is not a stellar performance, I have to tell you.
Fortunately, however, you are there and are capable of shedding light on what is happening. Your documents show that you have identified new challenges for protecting the value of impartiality. I would like to know what those challenges are. At the risk of asking you to repeat yourself, I would like to know what you are going to do to solve the problems.