Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Madam President, thank you for coming. This is my first opportunity to talk to you. I've been here for five years but I haven't dealt with this report before.
I was a city councillor for 13 years in the city of Burlington. People often ask me what the difference is. For me, the fundamental difference is that we knew in city council knew the people who did the work at the city, but here we obviously don't know the thousands of public servants who do great work for Canadians across the country, including in my riding, where I've had them out doing seminars and so forth. I appreciate the work our civil servants do. They are often not as appreciated as they should be, but I appreciate your work on this.
I just have some basic questions because I don't know the answers to them. In your statement you said that merit was not demonstrated in some staffing files. Is there a good definition of merit? Should everyone in the system know what it means to set meritorious requirements? Do you make that definition? Does each individual department make that decision, or how does that work?