Thank you, Madam Vice-Chair.
Welcome, Mr. Borbey, and congratulations on your new role. I appreciate the fact that you're only a few hours into it.
I'm going to ask some questions, more general in nature than necessarily having to do with the dollar figures, about some of the priorities of your department, some of the stuff you alluded to when you were before us about a month ago, by way of follow-up. It may be a way for you to elaborate and expand.
I know in the opening statement you provided, you mentioned some priorities: independently safeguarding merit and non-partisanship, building a public service that is representative of Canada's diversity, and flexibility for managers to achieve results for Canadians and ensure fair and transparent employment practices.
These are all important undertakings, but they're also very large undertakings. I want you to expand a little. I know we probably don't have time in my seven minutes for you to give a full expansion, but what sorts of steps do you think we can take to make sure the public service is representative of Canada's diversity? Maybe that's something you can start off with. If you have time, you can elaborate a little on maintaining the non-partisanship of the public service, what gaps there may be now, and how you expect to fill some of those gaps in your mandate.