Minister, I was asking specifically about the vacancy rates and if you're aware what they might be. Then I was going to ask a follow-up question as to the operating costs on a daily basis for the buildings in the national capital region so that perhaps we could ascertain—based upon vacancy rates and the operating costs—whether, perhaps, this amount of money could be better utilized by evaluating these working spaces.
I'll go back, then, to employees, since we were talking about the type of work currently being done in the federal public service. I'm sure you saw the story—as reported by Kevin Page, our previous Parliamentary Budget Officer, who is now at the University of Ottawa—indicating that 19,151 new jobs were added last year. This, of course, means that the public sector is growing faster than the private sector. However, the results that Canadians are getting really aren't indicating the benefit of having hired so many individuals.
For example, ESDC added 8,500 new positions but saw disastrous record highs for passport delays, delaying thousands of Canadian travellers this summer. Of course, everyone knows about Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. It hired 1,750 new people in July, yet it had more than two million applications in its backlog. This is prior to the new 500,000-individual target being set.
I'm wondering, Minister, how the Treasury Board will consider value for money going forward, given that there's been an incredible investment in the public service—greater than that of the private sector—yet we're still not seeing the results. What are you going to do about that?