I have two minutes. I'll be quick. I'm an Alberta talker. I'm slow.
I think there have been some improvements. I think the union has a greater relationship with National Defence than it ever had before. Although we don't always agree, we are certainly able to have those discussions and hear each other out. I think that's very worthwhile.
I think we've had a lot of challenges over the years. Certainly, the 2012 layoffs that were referenced earlier did not do much to help things. We still haven't recovered from them. Frankly, in my opinion, they're a large reason for why we have the contracting-in today.
When those 2012 layoffs happened, they were telling us that they were going to cut programs. Programs did not get cut. I work at defence research when I'm not in this position. I'm very much aware of how those programs get built. People hold on to them. They're their life's work. They don't want to lose them. They want to keep going with them. We just continue to push and push, doing more with less and less. That just builds to bringing in the contractors and leaving us in this situation.
That SWE has not been increased to be able to get the work done. Instead, we are paying phenomenally greater amounts of money to those contractors instead of having it in the public service and keeping that corporate knowledge that we're talking about.