As an aside, I know a few francophones in Saguenay—Lac-Saint-Jean who have to extend their working hours so they can answer questions asked in English by people from other provinces. I wonder how many people from other provinces are hired to answer francophones from Quebec outside normal working hours, but that's not the point.
We're seeing cuts in government departments. The public service has grown by over 40%, but services are not keeping pace. Federal employees, according to the information we receive, are less and less motivated. Sometimes, some even feel that their work is pointless, while customers, the public, feel that federal services related to passports or customs, for example, are not good.
How is it possible to reconcile the skyrocketing number of employees, the decline in the perceived quality of services and, at the same time, the promise to cut spending ever so slightly?
Where are those cuts going to happen, in the end?