I agree, and if we trust our ambassadors and high commissioners to represent Canada abroad, I think we can trust them with a reasonable amount of human resource management too, so they can make these decisions locally.
For example, you mentioned in your own report, Mr. Edwards, that there are 23 different handbooks in the United States alone. I know it's not your problem, because you're relatively new to your position as well, but how on earth did this ever happen? We had 23 different handbooks with 23 different sets of rules just for the United States, Mr. Chairman, which, out of all the countries, has to be as close as possible to us in the way it does its business. I can't imagine how moribund the human resources management has become.
The Auditor General's report, getting back to HR, in paragraph 3.33 says, “We found no clear link between recruitment levels and long-range planning, demographic analysis, or vacancy-trend analysis”. Now, are these issues going to get resolved?