Thank you for all the important work that you do and for being here again.
Mr. Giroux, we talked earlier about the $800 million in new cash for professional and special services, and that includes spending on external consultants. What concerns do you have, if any, about the level of spending on consulting services in Canada, looking at our OECD partners and where their levels of spending are on external consultants? Have you looked at that? Do you have any comparables that you can give us?
To add to that, the President of the Treasury Board was here saying, “Compared to spending on the public service, the use of professional services has also remained relatively consistent since 2011.” However, in the numbers that we have for the public service it has grown by 11.8%, I would say, since 2020, but IT outsourcing has grown 45.8% in that period. It contradicts what the President of the Treasury Board says.
Maybe you could speak to both.