The Public Service Employment Act has a definition of merit. As most of you probably know, this act was put in force in 2005. There is actually a statutory evaluation of that forthcoming. It will probably come to this committee.
That piece of legislation says merit has two elements in it: one, essential requirements; and two, asset requirements, meaning other things or other organizational needs that might be required in filling that position.
The merit test is that the essential requirements are met. It is the manager, the people doing the hiring, who sets out what the essential requirements of the job are. Those essential requirements are set out by a department, by the manager. We expect these to be set out upfront so that everybody knows what the essential requirements are—you can't go and change them along the way—and that an evaluation be done against these essential requirements.