I would just add, Mr. Chair, to what the deputy minister said. There are two risks I'd like to point out.
One we had mentioned in the chapter. It's the risk of the creation of an employer-employee relationship, which brings a number of consequences with it and which I think could be fairly serious if you have contractors who were there for a very long period of time, depending on how you had set up the contract and how they carry out the work. They shouldn't be, for example, in the government telephone directory. There are basic things like that.
The other one is that especially in IT contracts there is a risk of creating a dependence upon a contractor. With government having several very old and complex systems and contractors who have worked on them for many years, the only people who may actually really know how those systems work are the contractors. You can create, I think, an undue reliance and, in fact, at times be held hostage by professionals in that regard, so it's important to establish what is an appropriate level of contracting.
I think there will always be a need for contracting, be it specialized services to respond to peak demands or in fact even in the way government departments are funded, in that they don't have long-term funding and will opt to have contracts they can terminate if needed. But it's important to establish what is that appropriate level of contracting.