Madam Speaker, when my colleague delivered the budget to the House he indicated in bringing the deficit down it was necessary to freeze salaries for a further two years.
We are anxious to bring that to an end sooner if at all possible by finding efficiencies in the delivery of programs and services, and to examine roles and responsibilities as my colleague to my right is doing. Hopefully we will be joined in that exercise by our employees and their bargaining agents so that we can at the earliest possible time restore the opportunity for all of our employees to enjoy salary increases.
I might add that over the last few years even though there has been a salary freeze in three of the four years, because of the incremental increases on average increases of about 3 per cent have been going to our employees.