Mr. Speaker, we put in place a range of adjustment tools such as the early retirement incentive, which provides a waiver of pension penalties for public service employees who are 50 and over with 10 years of service, and the early departure incentive, which facilitates through cash incentives the voluntary departure of employees in those departments which have been hardest hit by expenditure reductions.
We have also established joint adjustment committees across the country in partnership with the unions. We have implemented a policy of alternates which permits a number of people who want to keep their jobs to change jobs with people who want to leave the public service.
All in all, we have put into place a lot of measures which indicates that we want the downsizing to be done in a fair and equitable manner. Everybody has recognized this is what has happened.