Mr. Speaker, our government treats taxpayers' money with the utmost respect. Sometimes professional services are needed to acquire special expertise or to meet unexpected fluctuations in workload. In some cases, the government contracts with private sector companies to deliver or improve services without maintaining an expensive government bureaucracy. Professional services contracting means the government is only paying people when there is work to be done.
To that member's question, professional services costs are down $200 million since 2010-11, and temporary help services are also down $11 million since last year and $75 million since 2010-11.
I hope that answers the member's concern.