I certainly would never advocate the furlough Fridays, or what is commonly known as Rae days. I don't know which party that member is with these days, but the whole thing is that this is not the way to go.
We also have to remember the public service has to provide services to the public, and reductions are going to have an impact on their ability to do that. When we look at hitting the budgets of the departments, you're going to have an impact on the programs they deliver. If you have an impact on that, what comes out the other end is a service. That is going to be reduced.
These are the areas you have to look at. There are temporary help agencies throughout the government. There are millions and millions of dollars spent on those areas. You should take a look at that, and at the contracting out. There are literally hundreds of millions of dollars spent on contracting out. They should be taking a harsh look at those areas as well.
They should be looking at what the services are that we have to provide, what we are doing well, and what we are not doing well. They should be bolstering that.
Food inspection is a good example because what they did is self-regulate. They gave it to the company and said, “You look after the regulation. We'll only come by and see you every now and again.” Look what has happened there. They've really had to take a look at that and now they're picking up and trying to go back and bring inspectors into the plants. Hopefully they can cut down the troubled areas that we've seen over the past few years.
With recruitment into posts, you mentioned that a million people or more had applied for jobs. It's not only recruitment. It's recruitment and retention, which is a big part. So you may get some people to come in, but when you have a public service... And if you look at the survey results, 36% of the respondents say they rarely or never complete assigned workloads during their regular hours of work. What that tells us, and what our members tell us, is they have to put in unpaid overtime in order to complete the tasks they are doing. They are doing that because they want to get the job done.
Like you said, it's a quality public service. These workers very much respect the responsibilities they have and want to carry them out. So some of them are doing it at times when they are not being paid. They don't complain about it, but when the survey results came out they mentioned it. They say they should get some recognition for that.