We want to know what these people are doing. Some of these contract employees were hired on an individual basis, but others come with services that we have purchased. For example, a department may, because of its small size, ask a company to provide the complete service for one of its programs. In such a case, we will buy everything as one piece: the staff, the equipment and the software. Some of these 1,700 contract employees come from arrangements that the departments have inherited. Others are people who work on slightly more specific projects.
We therefore want to analyze this number. We want to know where these people are located and what they do. We need to decide whether we want to continue on this basis or whether we would prefer to take a different approach, if we are not talking about permanent positions. For example, we need to determine whether it would be advantageous to use term staff as opposed to contract employees. We want to do a complete analysis and plan our human resources in a comprehensive fashion, as recommended by the Auditor General in his recent report.