Thank you, Minister.
Thank you for the question. In the budget measures, an additional $20 million has been allocated to accelerate and increase the hiring of students within the public service. Those are the amounts you see here. Some departments may take more because this is an increase that goes beyond the number of students that these departments will normally hire. These amounts are allocated for that purpose.
We have launched several initiatives to facilitate the transition between university and the public service. We recruit on campuses. For instance, this year we held eight job and career fairs in universities. We do this in person and we also do a great deal electronically. We have transition programs, that is, we can have bridging and some programs allow for that. We also have programs with universities and with co-op programs so that students can come and work for us for four months and then bridge in after graduation if they are interested in working in the public service.
We are extremely aware of the situation. We have introduced and continue to introduce a number of measures to address this problem. As the minister has indicated, this is an issue that is a great concern to us. We want to ensure continuity in recruitment in order to take into account those very demographic pressures that affect the public service, like all other sectors of activity.