I agree. We have good professionals and they can do the job, but this is hurting morale. I know Minister Jaczek tried to dispute that, but I think that, if you talk to the representatives of the workers, they'll tell you clearly that this is having an impact. The Phoenix system, a sole-source contract that ended up costing hundreds of millions of dollars, started with the Conservatives. It was carried forward with your government. It's demoralized the public service. Outsourcing to companies like this means less transparency, lower accountability and the loss of institutional knowledge. Also, problems arise with the overreliance on this approach—the high cost and lack of competition.
We lose accountability, erode capacity and hurt our ability to retain staff. Mr. Barton called it the “new phenomenon” that's going on in consulting. He said that the new phenomenon is that these big consulting firms are spending record amounts of money on research and development, because they're securing such big contracts that they're creating infrastructure on their own. Do you not see a problem with that?