Thank you to all of you for being here.
The purpose of our study is to measure the impact of this wage freeze. It is very important that front-line people like you are here to tell us. My personal belief is you can't cut the budget without an impact on service to Canadians.
Also, just as a preface, I don't believe you can balance the budget by cutting and hacking and slashing at the public service, even though it seems to be like catnip to Conservative governments. They can't seem to stay away from this. It's a false economy of reducing the public service. A budget freeze is a budget cut, in my view.
I would like to ask you, from your expertise in your areas, to share with us, if you can, specifics of how this will in fact impact the services offered to Canadians.