Mr. Speaker, it is important for us to recognize that what we are really talking about in the life of the government, and this is a conservative estimate, is 30,000 jobs. These are public service jobs. What we are talking about is staff years. The Conservatives can say that these are people who are retiring and the number of people affected is not as high as the actual numbers. However, we are talking about staff years and jobs that have been lost, not to mention the services Canadians receive because of being cut back. These are, in fact, positions.
We cannot have a dramatic reduction of the civil service and then go out and say to retiring military members that we are going to be hiring military personnel at a time when we have these massive cuts to our civil service. There are fewer jobs. There are fewer staff years.
More could be done if the government would follow advice and deal with transitional services. Invest in transitional services. More military personnel would directly benefit if the government made that a higher priority.