I think the attrition rate is well known from witnesses, but the issue this committee has not explored—and I've attended most of these hearings—is actually looking at the budget. When Mr. Grégoire testified here, I was very surprised that a department would not know how many inspectors it had in 1992. They couldn't give the comparison with what Justice Moshansky said was 1,400, and we have an inspectorate of about 800-plus for the last five years.
What I'm concerned about is that you haven't asked for future projections. The future projections I've heard.... I was part of a briefing back in February 2006 at which I asked specifically for a presentation on the reorganization. The person presenting it from Transport Canada had a slide show that they presented, and the slide that was most alarming to me indicated that they were anticipating a 46% retirement rate. They then were projecting—this was in 2006—a minus 1% budget cut for each of the next three years, and then minus 5% projected for 2008-09. I said, “Give me that slide”, and they said, of course you're not going to get that slide, but we are proposing this; we are planning with this. And they said, “With the election of the Conservative government, it may be worse.”
It is on that basis, looking forward, that I am very concerned that you have not gotten into the meat of the numbers. The closest you've come to is 140. You should ask for that slide, which gave management's projections of what they're going to have to deal with going forward, because I think that is the issue that needs to be looked at by this committee.