Thank you. I'd be pleased to speak to that particular issue.
Use of term employees within a large organization like ours is an important part of our flexibility in terms of managing our workforce. As you know, we've had very significant operational pressures and we've had a very large number of our military personnel deployed and moved into other activities, particularly during this period of high operations.
On the periods of time for term employees, it is very much Treasury Board policy, as the employer. It's the Government of Canada policy, which we respect and oversee and try to ensure it's well communicated to our managers. When there are pressures, people are asked to take a look at the risks associated with managing their overall long-term costs.
We've certainly instructed people and have recently provided some clarification around ensuring that we not only respect the policy, but the spirit of the policy, and watch how terms are used and align our business planning and our human resources, our people management planning. So we work very hard at trying to ensure that kind of thing doesn't happen, that we keep and respect the policies of the board and collective agreements.