Thank you very much, and thank you, Mr. Minister, for making yourself available for a short time this morning. Because I only have a short time, I will be concise in my questions, and I would appreciate, Mr. Minister, your being concise in your answers, just to get as many of the questions that need to be answered in as possible.
I agree with the minister on one point. I think the Parliamentary Budget Officer is indeed courageous. He's courageous to continue asking the questions that he needs to ask in order to get the answers for the Canadian people that he thinks are appropriate to ask this government for, because he has concerns about this.
You mentioned the IMF and you also mentioned the Parliamentary Budget Officer. The minister will know, and he can certainly attest to this, because it's in a public document, that the IMF also questions the financial outlook in five years' time—the plan is a whole other issue, because I don't think there is one—saying that the International Monetary Fund disagrees with the government and that we will still be in deficit.
My first question to the minister concerns the 11,463 civil servants you mentioned in question period and again this morning. You will know that the Parliamentary Budget Officer went out to talk to 10 different departments. Those 10 departments make up about half of the operating spending of the government; they are your largest departments. They represent about 160,000 public servants.
In response to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, those departments came back to his office and indicated that they have 1,133 individuals who would leave their positions. So either the department is misleading this committee and the Parliamentary Budget Officer or the government is.
That's my first question: are you talking about net? If every year 11,000 leave their positions, then we would certainly be without public servants by now. We know that you have been adding public servants.
My first question is, what departments are you referring to when you talk about those 11,463 civil servants. Is that net? And how do you mitigate the risk, if we're having 11,000 civil servants leaving this year and you have not rehired any of them?