That's a bonus. Thank you.
You will see from my remarks that the Public Service Commission is certainly a very active participant in the renewal of the public service through our programs, through the programs for hiring students to give them experience through what we call the FSWEP, the summer student work experience program, as well as the co-op programs, which are very important and very valuable.
Of course, we also do recruitment at the post-secondary level. We are conducting a recruitment campaign at the post-secondary level, and we hope that students from one end of the country to the other will think of us as a career option. We encourage them to apply for positions in various career categories.
There are personnel shortages in the public service, for instance in information technology. We also need good communications agents and scientists. We need personnel in all areas. We hope that young people will choose careers in the public service.
We have a lot of activities to move this forward, and we can do more. Our programs are sometimes a bit slow and cumbersome, but we are working a great deal on modernizing them.
We have a very ambitious program to modernize our suite of programs, to provide better services, to provide better real-time feedback to participants and potential candidates, and also to support managers who are looking to match the skills that are required with what's available in the Canadian labour force.
Hiring young Canadians has to be a priority. We need to do a better job. We need to rejuvenate the public service. If you look at the statistics, we are not keeping up with the labour force. We need to do better. That means a fair amount of external hiring over the next few years.
As soon as we open up to external hiring, as my notes say, we also open ourselves up to greater diversity. There are a lot of Canadians from all kinds of backgrounds across the country, coast to coast to coast, who want to be part of the public service of the future, and our job is to make that happen.
Thank you. Merci.