If I may, I will make a small comparison with last year.
The system now has a much greater capacity. I said that we have re-staffed nearly all of the 700 compensation positions that had been cut, but that's not all. We have also doubled the staff complement. We have a liaison unit to respond to employees. When it comes to the capacity to analyze reports, we were also lacking the resources needed to make good decisions. We now have an integrated team with the Treasury Board. I talked about it in my opening remarks.
My colleague Mr. Linklater leads a unit that integrates anything to do with public services and the Treasury Board. That is very important because we now have a government-wide approach, and we understand the issue and the complexity of the problems. Mr. Linklater could talk to you about a series of proposed measures that will enable us to reduce wait times and the number of transactions.
In June and July, we saw a decrease in the inventory of transactions. Afterwards, we had to emphasize transactions related to collective agreements. I'm not saying that in a negative way, as it is a good thing. The government settled collective agreements that had expired nearly four years ago and that means retroactive payments and signing bonuses—in short, that is money for employees, so it is important for that to be done. However, compensation officers spent a lot of time on that, so the inventory of pending transactions started to grow again.
So we think that, as long as we have not completed the transactions associated with collective agreements, the inventory of transactions will not decrease. Another issue is the tax season for 2017. We know that this period will be more difficult, but we anticipate that, as soon as we have completed these two steps, we will be able to focus much more capacity on transactions and reduce the inventory.