Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I want to continue on my question in regard to outsourcing and contracting in the public service. You just heard from the member from OCIO, Catherine, that we're not paying our staff enough, and I fully agree. That is leading to serious competition issues, such that it's much easier to work for IBM; it's much easier to work for McKinsey; it's much easier to work for these other companies that then hold the government hostage by saying it has to pay them because there's no one else to do this work because the government has failed to pay its employees properly or at least at a competitive rate.
I can't express how disappointed I am by that. It is a serious concern, and I hope that after today's meeting, you can supply us with written advice on how, maybe by the time you renew your strategy, you're actually going to implement wage increases or become more competitive. We're losing real taxpayer dollars to profit CEOs and boards. Those profits could be directly paying for the salaries and wages of technicians who could be doing this work.
I hope that's simple enough and could be understood enough so that you know how serious an issue this is, and I hope that members of the government will also be keen to address it. Of course it is not just the civil service that is dealing with these problems; it's likely a funding capacity issue due to long decades of non-spending on operations and maintenance, similar to what we've seen in many audits before.
How much profit are these seven contracts generating for those companies?