Government Operations committee  If I could just comment on that again, when asked what they are doing to close the gap because of some of the challenges they are having with recruitment—again, in that report that I'm sure you'll get copies of—one of the top solutions cited by federal government departments was

Government Operations committee  That's a good question.

Government Operations committee  We didn't do focus groups. But Statistics Canada actually did a really interesting study of older Canadians and retirement. It might have been through the labour force study. I can't remember now. But they did ask people who were getting close to retirement when they wanted to re

Government Operations committee  I believe that government is seen as a place where you can make a decent living, depending on the occupation you're in. For example, if I'm a CEO, I sure wouldn't want to be flipping back into the public sector because I wouldn't want to leave my $1 trillion.

Government Operations committee  In our focus groups we asked students about their destination of choice. Was it the private sector or was it the public sector? With the exception of master's of public administration students, by far it was the private sector, because they have a stereotypical view, I would add,

Government Operations committee  There may be opportunities.

Government Operations committee  That's a great idea. You know, I'm thinking of the RBC, which I'm a big fan of in this context. If you go to RBC's website—and actually, the federal government may want to do that on its job site, whatever the job site is—there's all sorts of information for newcomers to Canada.

Government Operations committee  No. Actually, I couldn't speak of it with any authority, but I do know that is an issue, and certainly an issue for newcomers coming to Canada. If there's some way we could quickly expedite that assessment offshore in the Canadian sites, it would be much better.

Government Operations committee  They're the usual cast of characters, I'm afraid, who are probably excellent in most things. I mentioned RBC. I happen to bank there. Anyway, RBC, to me, is the best in Canada in this context. IBM is excellent. Many of the large financial institutions are quite good, but RBC tops

Government Operations committee  Absolutely, there are. I have been asked to speak at several events in public sector forums with organizations such as RBC and others that do bring that information and insight. So there have been opportunities, and the federal government has sought those opportunities.

Government Operations committee  The issue you raise, of course, is of concern to lots of organizations. As I recall, we did some work on this a couple of years ago, and I think the figures for the federal public service weren't as robust; they were low, as in the private sector they were low. One of the things

Government Operations committee  I think it's all of the above, because other organizations are getting focused on all of the above. Now, having said that, there are ways to prioritize. I have a very small firm now, so I can't do the workforce planning for me, because if I go, so goes the firm, but at any rate,

Government Operations committee  I did see the figure, and it was that over 900,000 résumés or CVs were processed last year. It was a significant number, and I just went, wow, that's phenomenal. When we ask public servants why they started to work in the public service, by the way, without fail, all three level

Government Operations committee  Thank you. Let me say that at the conference I spoke about—it was in February, I believe, of this year—there were people there from the federal public service and various provinces across the country. One of the speakers asked how many of us were doing appropriate workforce plan

Government Operations committee  Absolutely. In fact, the document was published through the Conference Board. I would say that the federal government departments, cities, and provinces funded the work. So you certainly should have access to the report. I'll leave you some information about it.