We are lagging behind in a few things. Some of them the numbers don't show, and I'll give you a concrete example in a minute. That is something which I'm committed to working on.
Certainly we're lagging behind on visible minorities, and I think we're slightly behind on persons with disabilities. We know that we have to consider it at this point, because we're behind on every hiring, and so one of the things we have done is to put in every one of our managers' agreements a clause under which they are required—and we'll assess them on it at the end of the year—to put those considerations at the forefront in staffing actions. I honestly think that may not be enough, and I have asked our human resources folks to look at other strategies to basically make sure that we are attractive to those communities, because sometimes that's the problem. It does come back, I think, to branding, and what we can offer people as careers in the federal public service.
Something the numbers do not show but that is of concern to me is that while we have no difficulty attracting female prosecutors, when you look at our demographics, and the higher levels of prosecutors, at our senior level, women are greatly under-represented. That's of extreme concern, I think, to my entire management team, not just to me. We have asked our employment equity and diversity committee to do a special study, to find out where the barriers are, because we noticed not only that women were not getting the promotions, but also that they weren't applying for the promotions. We've now finished a survey, and I'm expecting the results in the next few weeks. That ought to help us develop an action plan.
The numbers are very instructive, but we try to go beyond the numbers to see if there are actually other gaps that would not be visible. When you look at our demographics, more than 50% of our prosecutors are female, but in the higher levels we're getting below, I think, 30%.