Thank you very much, everyone, for being here today. It's an excellent way to kick off this study.
I had an opportunity to present, but some stuff happened so we ended up cancelling the committee meeting. I'm not going to delve into a lot of my comments. I'm going to save that for another time. I want to ask questions of these people who have presented some excellent testimony.
One of the things Katherine mentioned was about people being afraid, about the worker's voice in a lot of contexts. Obviously, they enter into a contract and their hope, of course, is full-time employment at some time, and then that contract, as my research shows, leads to another contract, to another contract, and six, seven or eight years later.... Allyson, from Sault Ste. Marie, is a perfect example. She is making $25,000 five different jobs later, without the benefits.
There is one thing I want your comments on. We did this a bit when it came to pay equity. I sat on that committee. It was about being proactive. We took a look at the federal service and the corporations that we're responsible for in terms of having a proactive system where managers, directors and whatnot would have to identify those who would be working precariously and why.
I say that to you as well, because in my experience, I worked precariously in government and I also had my own business. A lot of what my research has indicated is that when managers started.... Also, this is just me. There are a thousand scenarios we can talk about, but I'll talk about this one. When they introduced performance pay for managers, part of it was managing a budget, right? What's the way to keep costs down? Keep people precariously employed: no benefits, nothing, no costs.
I'd like some comments from Katherine on that particular scenario and perhaps Allyson could delve a little more into her experiences.
I'll start with Katherine.