Government Operations committee  The short answer is yes. I'm not an actuary, by any stretch of the imagination. But I think there have already been moves by this government and those of other countries—as much as it makes me cry—to think about extending the age of retirement. In the United States, as you know,

Government Operations committee  I'm so sorry, I can't seem to—they told me channel one. Can we try that?

Government Operations committee  Are you telling me you're having a nice summer vacation?

Government Operations committee  Okay, thank you. The laughter will come later. I apologize for that.

Government Operations committee  Thank you, and again my apologies for the translation glitch. I would say that I don't know enough about this issue, frankly, within the federal public service to speak with a lot of knowledge in terms of what the process is and what the steps are. My argument, Mr. Nadeau, would

Government Operations committee  Absolutely. In fact, I would argue that if it's the view of the federal public service that there isn't a problem or won't be a problem, then it's probably in the minority of other governments and organizations across the country. Most organizations are waking up to the fact that

Government Operations committee  And the public sector. Alberta, for example, is doing some great work in this context, as is B.C. and several other provinces.

Government Operations committee  Time to hire is key. Some organizations in the private sector, particularly—and this was before, too, when we had the high-tech bubble in 2001—were hiring and filling positions within 48 hours. One fellow I know from Agrium out in Calgary happened to meet two people at a vegetabl

Government Operations committee  It's both, actually. I would argue that right now, from my limited knowledge of what's going on currently in the federal public service, it seems to be that most everybody wants to hire experience first. They don't want to have to grow from within. When you ask individuals or org

Government Operations committee  I was very interested when I learned that China and India, with huge populations, were recruiting in Canada. The first time I heard it was about two years ago. It was through an article in the Asian Pacific or something like that. They were recruiting for people with particular t

Government Operations committee  Here's another very interesting issue. I don't quite know how to deal with this one myself. When we did our focus groups with students—again, it comes to the question about experience versus non-experience—we met with many engineering students, young women and young men. When we

Government Operations committee  Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, everyone. Good afternoon. I am delighted to be here. I am very pleased indeed to discuss what I consider to be a critical issue, an issue that too many organizations have for too long been too slow to respond to, and that, of course, is th