I won't take the whole five minutes.
Just briefly, for my New Democratic friends, and for my education also, the word “severance” is often associated with somebody being let go or being laid off because there's no more work. But in this instance, when we refer to it in here, and in our case in the vast majority of the changes, severance also refers to people choosing to sever their employment relationship with the Government of Canada. So it's not that they're getting laid off. It's not that they're getting fired. Because of agreements that have been signed in the past, federal employees, if they decide to leave the federal employ and go to the private sector or to the province of Quebec or Ontario or go work somewhere else, are entitled to a severance payment.
In here we are saying there are no more severance payments in the future for new employees, but for those of you who have qualified for that severance, we are bulk-paying you up front, whether you want to take half or full payment, but we're calling it severance.
My point is this. I think when it comes to language, we need to be careful. I don't know how this translates. I'm not French. I don't have access to how it relates in French. But for here, if we were to go out the door and say that in supplementary estimates (A) we had $1.3 billion in severance package money that we didn't have before, it would sound as though we were laying off a whole bunch of people to pay them out. But that is actually not the case. This is for people who, if they were to choose to leave the federal service, would be entitled to this payment.
Is that correct?