Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Page, gentlemen, good day. It is always a pleasure to have you here.
I would like to get back to the information you gave my colleague.
At your first appearance before this committee, last April, you said that “from a service delivery perspective, we need departmental strategies for savings” to know whether services will be provided, “service level standards”, because quality may vary, “and fully loaded costs for program activities for affected departments”. That was on April 12. You did not have the information at that time.
You came back before us on October 5 and said that the operating budget freeze measures announced in budget 2010 were somewhat unclear. You still did not have that information. The committee passed a motion calling on the government to provide you those figures.
On December 2, you reappeared before our committee. Despite the motion, you had yet to obtain all the information you needed to do your work, so you were unable to provide this information to us, nor to the House of Commons. It was very important for us, as committee members, to understand the degree of risk, given the budget freeze. You pointed this out, in fact. You said you were going to try another method.
I gather that following today's appearance and the tabling of your report, few organizations considered the operating budget freeze in their human resources planning nor have they devised a strategy to mitigate the potential impact of this freeze.
Is this correct? These people do not have a strategic plan?