Mr. Chair, first let me make an observation and then consider the way forward.
The statistics quoted in the Auditor General's report are correct. The statistic about movement of employees is all-inclusive. For 2008-09, 13% of the employees in the emergency management area actually left the Department of Public Safety or left emergency management but stayed elsewhere in public safety. If you include all of the churn, that's pretty normal. Now, 13%, I would suggest, is high. My experience at the Canada Revenue Agency is that we were at around a 5.5% to 6% departure rate.
As to what we're going to do in that regard, first of all it's about having a clear way forward for emergency management, a concrete set of plans and deliverables, an accountability framework that lines up around it, having the right people in place—we've been doing some staffing in the emergency management area to ensure that we have the team to get the job done—and recognizing and rewarding those who are delivering the goods. I think that's the kind of work environment you create to try to mitigate this in the future.
I as deputy and the executive management team have had good discussions about what we can do in public safety and emergency management as well.