Vote 30 covers not only separation payments, but also maternity leave and other statutory payouts. We noted an increase. There are two factors at play here in the public service.
Firstly, people are reaching retirement age and can thus retire without penalties. And so they are leaving the public service and when they do, they receive severance pay.
Secondly, approximately 15,000 people join the public service in any given year. These employees are young and have children. So the increase is equally due to benefits related to the care of children—maternity and paternity leave—and to departures and retirements.
The $100 million increase was requested because these two phenomena are occurring at the same time. In the course of the past seven years, we saw total increases of approximately 19% in disbursements from this fund, payouts that are due equally to retirements and statutory leave.
It is quite difficult because we reimburse the departments once the funds are requested. We are not necessarily in a position to predict, on a yearly basis, what the requirements will be from one or the other quarter. However, this is what we have seen over the past seven years.