Thank you so much, Chair.
Mr. Côté, I apologize that my questions are going to be in English. I'm not going to make you suffer through my terrible French. If I am speaking too quickly and the interpretation is not keeping up, please let me know, so I can slow down.
I'm not a politician. I'm an engineer who is currently in a political role. Before I was elected in the city of Hamilton, I was a consulting engineer for 20 years. From that perspective, I see the value that external consultants bring in specialty expertise. I worked mainly on public sector jobs that were very specialized. It wouldn't have been cost-effective, or effective in any way, to have that particular expertise in-house.
When I was elected to the public sector as a representative for Hamilton, I got to see first-hand the amazing work that the public service does on a daily basis. I am absolutely a big supporter of bringing in expertise in-house, where it makes sense, to build up that capacity in the public service, but it also has to be balanced with those specialty areas where you do need an external consultant. In the spring economic statement, we are proposing to reduce spending on external management and other consulting services by about 20% over the next five years.
How do we find the balance of when to use external experts versus when to build capacity in-house?