Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you very much for attending today.
We've carefully gone through the supplementary estimates (B) in comparison with the main estimates, and I have a couple of questions to ask.
I will admit that I'm a neophyte to this. Given the minimal information provided for us in the supplementary estimates, I was delving down and asking many questions before I came here to try to figure out exactly what money is being spent for what.
It is of course our responsibility constitutionally, as members of Parliament, to scrutinize spending. One of the big issues before Parliament right now is the cuts to the civil service, the decision of the government to achieve cutting the deficit by cutting 19,000 civil servants. The minister has announced, previously in the media and now in the House, that he has reached a little bit more than half that target. Our job is to try to scrutinize and match up how we're supposedly going to have savings through cutting civil servants, and in cutting civil servants, exactly what savings have been achieved.
My question to you would be this. We see no change in vote 30a and we do see an $83 million change in...is it vote 20? It's $83 million.
Given that you have targeted these amounts and given that the minister has stated publicly that he's met half of his target, can you provide us today with the details of the removal of the staff from the government and the details of which of the three options they've opted for? There are obviously different cash figures based on which one they opt for, and they appear at a different point in time.
I know that the PBO and the union have experienced our same frustration in trying to actually match up the forecast cuts with the dollar figure in exactly when they're occurring, so my question is this: as there are no changes in the supplementary estimates (B) on this major figure, are we to assume, as members of Parliament, that this represents all 19,000 cuts in the civil service? Does it only represent some of them? Do we know if all the cuts are going to be made by the end of this fiscal year?