Mr. Speaker, first of all, to this day I am always blown away by the quality of the work done by our public service. With resources that began to be cut back in the 1990s and continued dwindling in the 2000s and now in the 2010s, it performs miracles with very little.
When we speak to public servants, we see how burned out they are. While they might need some leave to recover from this profound exhaustion, the government is attacking something that is very important to them, and we have ended up where we are now.
I am not surprised that the Conservative government did what it did. Just listen to how the President of the Treasury Board talks about the public service, the people who work in the service of Canadians. The language he uses is so disrespectful that one would think he sees them all as people who abuse the system.
Anyone who sits down with public servants will see that they are professional people who care about the services they are mandated to deliver to the public. There is a general lack of respect, and that needs to change.
I would simply point out to the member for Winnipeg North that the strikes that took place in the 1990s and earlier did not happen under a Conservative government, but rather under the Liberals—