You have asked a number of questions. Madam Chair, I would like to address each one separately.
As for whether we will be able to cope with the relatively high retirement or departure rate within the public service, I would like to point out that the number of persons who left the public service in 2009-2010 topped 13,000. We expect that the departure rate will increase slightly over the next three or four years. The number of retirements is nearing a peak, if you will, given the average age of public servants. This gives us an opportunity to rethink our approaches and operations.
As you have indicated, there is no hiring freeze. The public service would like to engage in and offer value added work. Taking in to account our own ways of doing business, we would like to become a little more innovative and reduce the amount of repetitive work over the next few years. Data entry, for example, is not a particularly value added activity. That is a task that is being transformed. When you look at the kind of work that public servants are doing today, you realize that there has been an increase in particular in value added work. Electronic data processing, services to the public and policy development are some of the areas where we have seen the greatest increase in value added work.
With the regard to the changes that we could make by reviewing our internal operations, obviously, we will look at what is done in other jurisdictions. We have begun to consider some of the approaches taken by British Columbia and Ontario. Our goal is to maintain and, in some cases, increase the level of services by doing things differently.