That's a very good point, Nick. When you negotiate with the public sector unions, you have your economic increase component, which is fairly simple. It's a percentage. But then there are other areas where there are agreements, sometimes there's a signing bonus, particularly if there's been a retroactivity issue, or there may be some other form of compensation. Every one of those changes involves a financial cost, but also a transaction. In some cases we would have, with a collective bargaining agreement, five or six individual transactions in addition to the pay increase.
Keep in mind, when we formed government there were 27 collective bargaining agreements that had expired, with 15 bargaining units. When you take 27 of those, with every one of those involving multiple transactions, it does put a lot of burden on the pay system. There's no way around it. The public sector pay system, public sector negotiations, are complex, and the pay system as it is working now doesn't handle complexities well. We're working on this.
I must say, Minister Qualtrough is working very hard on this, as are her officials, and across government.