Mr. Chair, if I may, I would like to point out one issue that we think is particularly important.
Obviously, there's the whole question of the coming retirements and the acting positions, but there's the whole question of foreign service directives. This is what establishes compensation and benefits for people working abroad.
They are deemed to be part of collective agreements. It must be co-developed with the National Joint Council, which involves, as we mentioned in paragraph 3.76, 18 bargaining agents, the Treasury Board Secretariat, and three separate federal agencies. As you can imagine, the complexity of that process gives the department absolutely no flexibility to be able to deal rapidly with situations.
We mentioned the question of insurance for high-risk areas. It took the government over a year to be able to put insurance in place for people going to Afghanistan.
There's a real issue on how this process works. Should the committee decide to look at this, I would strongly encourage you to bring in the Treasury Board Secretariat as well, because they are the employer, to really look at this whole issue with them.