Mr. Speaker, this is an excellent question. Indeed, correctional officers always find themselves in altogether weird situations. As I said earlier, they have been wanting to renegotiate their collective agreement for three years. They have been without an agreement for three years and they cannot find a representative within the Treasury Board who would enable them to sit down and engage in serious negotiations.
Suddenly, in this budget, in annex 8, there is some good news for them. Indeed, there is something that they had not exactly requested, namely an increase from 2% to 2.33% of the maximum pension benefits accumulation rate. They had not asked for that at all. It is a fact that they wanted a pension scheme which would be more acceptable and would correspond more to the specific nature of their work. They have a very difficult job. In fact, studies have demonstrated that stress increases with experience.
They were thus very happy to see this measure, which will enable them to retire faster, something they really need. So, faced with a statement like that in the budget, the Union of Correctional Officers tried to get in touch with people in the Treasury Board to explain this measure to them and to negotiate it. By the way, I did not mention it earlier, but it is retroactive to January 1, 2005. That is some good news!
There is some reason why somebody sat down at a some point and wrote this provision into the budget. They said to themselves: it is clear, they really want to give us something and they have understood our line of argumentation. They want to sit down to negotiate with the Treasury Board. They want to make a reality of that promise that is in the budget, but they can find nobody to do so. This is utterly unacceptable and I think that somebody in the Treasury Board may possibly wake up and return their calls to actually negotiate what is provided for in the budget.