Thank you, Chair.
We haven't looked specifically at planning of human resources in this audit, but as you well know, in past audits we've certainly looked at that issue and found, I think in all the audits we did, that the planning was inadequate, that even things like succession planning was done poorly. You are right in that many people come in on a temporary basis, which I'm not convinced is the best way to get the best people to come into the public service. The change that occurred with the legislation to transfer responsibilities to deputy ministers, I personally think, is a step in the right direction. They are the best place to understand the particular needs of their departments and to hopefully put more priority on human resource management. I just don't think it ever got the attention from senior managers that it requires.
From my perspective in my office, we have the status of a separate employer, which means that we do our own hiring. We have our own classification system and we are able to be very efficient in hiring. We noted in the report we tabled on Tuesday that the average time to hire--this is from a Public Service Commission report--is more than two years.