Finance committee  Certainly, when we look at the Expenditure Restraint Act, which restricted professionals' salaries to 1.5% going back from 2006 all the way to 2011, we see that the government is trying to gain favour by being tough and saying it is very fiscally minded with its own money and the

Finance committee  And it is in all departments. We are seeing lease-back of buildings. We see it in the Canada Revenue Agency. There are not enough people, so they outsource. The example I used before was on the computer systems programs, where there was sole-sourced outsourcing of computer servic

Finance committee  First, the practice of contracting out is out of control. Second, the federal government assumes that everything the private sector does is better, regardless of cost, quality and the time it takes. There is expertise within the government. It's like they're trying to push profes

Finance committee  Exactly.

Finance committee  It's certainly not relatively new, but it has certainly escalated in the last three or four years. We've seen staff leave and not be replaced, and billions of dollars--and I'm not using the “B” lightly--being outsourced to companies such as IBM and Telus and ICG for computer syst

Finance committee  In budget 2007 it was outright. The federal government wanted to privatize several laboratories, and it's looking again at closing down federally run public laboratories and moving them to the private sector.

Finance committee  They were presented in their proposal under the strategic expenditure review: cut back on staff at CFIA, cut back on its mandate, and move it to the private sector.

Finance committee  It's in the process of happening.

Finance committee  Thank you. I'm here to talk to you about four things: public funding for science and technology, outsourcing of government services, the strategic expenditure review, and the Expenditure Restraint Act. There is concern that the federal government is leaving itself without suff

Industry committee  The synchrotron is an excellent example of where government has done well in big science. The idea of the synchrotron started 20 years ago. It took a lot of federal government leadership to dig that hole and put the synchrotron in there. It's one of a very few in the world. The f

Industry committee  It has received sustained funding, since the start to now, from the federal government. That's the big-science in-house capacity that needs to be there. A private company would not have started the synchrotron.

Industry committee  The public service as a whole is older than the Canadian public, and the scientists as a whole are older than the public service. They start much later and don't stay past the age of 60. We hear about some staying on an emeritus status, but they do not stay. On the other issue,

Industry committee  I had the pleasure of listening to Dr. Alper speak about STIC and its vision for its work. He was very clear that STIC was going to be reactive to questions from the departments or from cabinet, that he was not performing the duty of foresight. There's only one person who does fo

Government Operations committee  Very quickly, again, an example is Saskatoon. Your federal government has put in highways to get to Saskatoon. Also there's the synchrotron there. There is now a scientific part there, so when private companies are setting up it's easier to track scientists. There are auditors. T

Government Operations committee  I would just add one point. If we look at the numbers of people in science and technology and research and development today compared to those back in 1990 and 1993, we're just now back up at the levels we were at a decade and a half ago. So when we talked about professionals doi