:
First of all, I want to thank you for inviting me to participate in this hearing.
I have with me today Lisa Addario, an employment equity officer, and David Orfald, our director of planning and organizational development.
The PSAC represents over 160,000 workers, the vast majority of whom work for the federal government in its departments and agencies.
Our union firmly believes the Government of Canada must address the changing demographic nature of our society in its employment and staffing policies and practices.
It is not good enough, as the President of the Public Service Commission told us last week, that 88.6% of federal staffing was insecure employment in term, student, and casual positions. It's not good enough, as the President of the Public Service Commission told you last week, that while “applicants to our programs are highly representative of visible minorities, we have yet to achieve appointment levels equal to workplace availability”.
The President of the Public Service Commission sugar-coated the problem when she said:
We found that 17% of new employees appointed to term and indeterminate positions had a history of casual employment. We need to be more strategic.
With respect, I would argue, and argue forcefully, that being more strategic is not the solution. Reducing, if not eliminating, the backdoor opportunities to term and indeterminate employment is the solution, and it's a solution our staffing agencies ignore.
The President of the Public Service Commission omitted to mention the impact of short-term recruitment on equity group members. Staffing for part-time or short-term needs does not attract the same consideration of employment equity objectives as are in place when an employer is staffing an indeterminate position.
According to the Public Service Commission's annual report for 2004-05, approximately 65% of those hired permanently into the federal public service were hired from a pool of temporary workers. Perhaps this is why the Senate committee recently described this hiring practice as a “significant stumbling block” to achieving employment equity.
Added to this is the significant amount of harassment and discrimination reported by racialized members of the public service.
As long as parliamentarians allow the PSC and departments to ignore it, equity-seeking groups will knock at the staffing door of the Government of Canada and they will be denied. It is as simple as that.
I think it is also fair to say that the PSC has an overly optimistic view of its capacity to address the demographic change that is occurring in our society. While it is true to say that the government currently has an abundance of job applicants and that students view the public sector as an employer of choice, it is equally true that the federal government's workforce is aging more quickly than the rest of the economy. More than one-third of its workforce is over 50 years of age, and retirement ages are generally younger than the population as a whole.
That calls for urgent action, and urgent action is not what we are seeing. Staffing actions to replace people who retire from the public sector--and there will be many over the next few years--are not the most significant issue. The most significant issue will be the loss of institutional memory that the government faces.
So saying, as the Public Service Commission does, that we are well equipped to replace staff and put people in the chairs of the retirees gives no indication whatsoever as to how well we are equipped to transfer the knowledge and expertise departing workers take with them. In some areas, it will be a substantial loss, and it has the potential to adversely impact delivery of public services.
So what is to be done? There are those who would lead you in the direction of making it more difficult for people to retire, perhaps by eroding federal pensions. I want to tell you that this would be wrong, as well as wrong-headed.
But I also want to suggest some approaches that would create a positive environment for addressing this challenge. There is no doubt the average age of retirement is a significant issue in the loss of institutional memory. The average age of retirement in the federal public sector in fiscal 2004-05 was 59. That said, fully 27%, or 1,278, of those who retired in 2004-05 did so at the age of 55.
Federal public sector workers contribute to the Public Service Superannuation Plan, a defined-benefit plan that provides pension income that equals 2% of the average best five years of continuous employment, multiplied by the number of years of service. Defined-benefit pension plans are under attack in Canada and elsewhere, but the reality is they should be championed, because they, and they alone, reward workers' long service. They're an essential part of keeping employees on the job. It is a fact that the federal public sector pension plan is a less advantageous defined-benefit plan than the large employer private sector norm because it is integrated with the Canada/Quebec pension plans, whereas most defined-benefit plans that cover workers in large private sector employers are stacked on top of the Canada Pension Plan and the Quebec Pension Plan.
You should also know that the average pensions are anything but generous, particularly for women. In 2005, federal public sector retirees received an average pension of $20,703 after working for the federal government for 22.5 years. Men fared better than women by a country mile, receiving on average a $24,229 pension, compared to the average pension of $14,185 for a retired federal public sector woman worker.
I want to say this: no one should begrudge any public or private worker the opportunity to retire and enjoy some quality time after working an average of nearly a quarter of a century for an employer with a defined-benefit pension plan. In short, there is no basis for making it more difficult for people to retire. A better approach is to create a more flexible workplace, offering enhancements that make it more attractive to keep retiring workers in the workplace longer.
In 1998, as a result of discussions with the PSAC over the workforce adjustment policy, the federal government re-implemented a policy that allows public sector workers employed directly by Treasury Board an opportunity to reduce their working time when they are within two years of retirement. While pay is prorated, when a federal worker takes advantage of this policy and reduces his or her working time by 20% to 40%, benefits remain the same and pensions are unaffected. This is a good policy, and it has clearly assisted the employer by allowing it to retain knowledge, while simultaneously allowing future retirees to make the transition.
Budget 2007 provides workers, including federal government workers, an opportunity to receive pension benefits and simultaneously work and accumulate further pension benefits. This change, which the PSAC supports, was proposed to encourage older workers to stay on the job longer. This benefit will provide flexibility for many older workers, and simultaneously and significantly it will also assist employers, including the federal government, to adjust to the demographic changes occurring in the economy and help to ensure that knowledge, expertise, and institutional memory are seamlessly transferred from one generation of workers to the next. So it is clearly a win-win, and I would encourage members of this committee to ensure that the necessary amendments to the Income Tax Act, the Pension Benefits Standards Act, and the Public Service Superannuation Act are introduced and passed before year-end so that Treasury Board and other federal public sector employees can implement the change when it comes into effect on January 1, 2008.
The key to adapting to a demographic change and ensuring that Canadians are well served by the public service is flexibility. Flexibility allows workers to ease into retirement, and flexibility allows them to remain on the job in a reduced capacity that facilitates the transfer of knowledge and experience to new hires into the system, who represent the diversity of Canada.
There are other things the government can and should do as an employer. It can and should, for example, ensure that federal departments and agencies use students and student employment in accordance with government policy and not as cheap manual labour, as is currently the practice too frequently in too many departments and agencies.
Moreover, the government can and must do more with regard to apprenticeship programs. During our last round of bargaining with Treasury Board, we advanced the demand on apprenticeship. While we did not achieve this contract language, the issue has not gone away.
According to our research, fully 50% of our members who work in the skilled trades can be expected to retire between 2003 and 2013. An adequate apprenticeship program will help the government face the prospect of trying to hire thousands of skilled trades in an environment where our economy faces a critical shortage of skilled workers, and it will provide interesting opportunities for existing employees to pass on skills to the next generation.
To sum up, the government, like all major employers, faces significant challenges on the employment front if it is to provide Canadians with the service they need and deserve. In order to meet these challenges in an effective and serious way, it needs to be innovative and provide more flexibility in terms of retirement.
But it needs to do more than this. It must, as a matter of principle and fairness, ensure that its workforce is representative of the Canadian population. That it has failed thus far to do this is more than unfortunate. That officials mandated to achieve this objective dismissed their failure to do so with the disingenuous assertion that the system needs to be more strategic is a disgrace.
Canadians deserve better, and the government can certainly do better. We encourage the government to act on these recommendations in order to be an employer of choice for the future.
I thank you again for allowing us to make the presentation.
:
I am not only talking about equity.
I listened to your comments and I have your brief in front of me. You said that, based on average salary levels for men and women retirees, women are even less well off than men. I don't know whether that was before pay equity or since it has come into effect. As well, you talked about retirement pensions not being as generous as those in the private sector.
I am not trying to be ironic but, quite honestly, I want to ask you this question: after hearing that, why would anyone want to work for the public service, whether or not there is a demographic deficit?
Based on my own experience—because I was a public servant for 26 years—there is a certain reality in terms of working conditions. I left the public service a few years ago, but I would like to know whether the government has become a bad employer with respect to working conditions or for other reasons. I ask that question in relation to the challenge we are currently facing—that is the subject of our study today—in other words, the fact that many public servants will be retiring soon. Are we in a position to ensure that there will not be too much disruption as that occurs? Will we be able to find people who are just as competent to do the job even, in some cases, perhaps even more competent?
I have already talked about this, and you will notice if you have read the Committee proceedings. Indeed, it is clear that you read Ms. Barrados' testimony. Other than the pensions and the measures that you discussed with us, are you confident or do you think that Ms. Barrados put a positive spin on things in order to recruit new employees and stimulate interest, among not only young people but people in mid-career as well, in the idea of working for the public service and serving the people of Canada?
My question goes back to what my colleague asked you when he wanted to know whether you are confident that we will succeed, in spite of the obstacles and challenges we are facing. I understand that you are speaking for the 160,000 members of the Alliance.
:
Thank you, Chair, and thank you to the guests today for their presentation.
I want to focus on two related areas. We've heard comments from Ms. Barrados as well about the area of temporary help services and the effects they have on the overall public service and how that relates to hiring people out of the equity groups.
I'm going to start with the temporary help services. I've done a little homework. I did some order paper questions. It just so happens, and sometimes you just get lucky, I guess, that these are the order paper questions I asked for: five years of inventory in the national capital area--I was hoping to get the whole country--and how much was spent on temporary help services, and I was able to come up with the amounts.
The committee might be interested in this. Over the last five years we spent $644 million on temporary help services in the national capital area. In 2001-02, the total expenditure on temporary help services in the Ottawa area was $114 million. Fast forward to 2005-06. It was $194 million, and for the first half of this fiscal year, it's $110 million. Do the math. If we're halfway through the year at $110 million, we're on our way to possibly hitting $220 million.
I mention that, Chair, because if you go back to 1995, we know about 45,000 jobs were shed from the public service, and it's pretty obvious they had to fill in the services somewhere.
The definition I got from the standing offers Treasury Board puts out to local contractors is that the supplier must provide temporary help services as and when requested by various federal government departments and agencies located in the national capital area in accordance with the classifications indicated in the temporary help services online system. Temporary help services are to be used against vacancies during staffing action, when a public servant is absent for a short period or when there's a temporary workload increase for which insufficient staff is available. The last might be passports, which I think we'd all welcome. In fact, I would like to see more temporary workers hired.
My question to you is, first of all, were you aware we were spending this amount of money? Maybe you weren't. I was able to get the order paper questions. I would just like your comments on the fact that we're spending this amount of money on temporary help services.
I will follow up, because I have some information about what kind of people we're hiring for temporary help and the classifications they have.
We seem to have runaway costs in temporary help services. Getting back to what Mr. Epp was saying, presumably we want to attract people by saying we have a place for you in the public service. There's a job, a career and there's work to do.
On the other hand, we seem to be using temporary help services as a proxy so that the public service can actually hire people.
This is a vast and complex situation. We are talking about a very large number of employees and of responsibilities that vary depending on the job description. According to what Ms. Barrados recently told us, the situation is pretty well under control as regards the most specialized jobs. But you are saying that is not quite the case and that there are problems.
I am from the region. I looked at things from a different perspective when I put you, Ms. Barrados, Mr. Gordon and yourself on the other side. I taught at Gisèle-Lalonde, Louis-Riel and Nicolas-Gatineau schools, as well as in Blackburn Hamlet. That is an area where you recruit a lot of people. That may not specifically apply to you, but the fact is that some of your union members come from that area.
I would like to give you a statistic that relates to Ontario, since I taught mainly on the Ontario side. In the region, 20 per cent of men who teach high school are no longer there five years later. Where do they go? Well, they enter the federal public service. They are attracted by the working conditions. I am not saying that the working conditions in the educational field are poor, but in terms of actual tasks and stress, it is very different. Even teachers who had more seniority than I had advised me at the time to leave the field and enter the public service. They told me that I would have easier work, a better job, and so on.
As I understand it, that recruitment doesn't solve the problem in situations—and the Parliamentary Secretary, Mr. Poilievre, pointed this out previously—where a crisis is in the making. You have talked about possible solutions by referring to more flexibility.
Could you provide additional details with respect to a possible partnership between the Public Service Commission and the Public Service Alliance of Canada? I'm talking about a situation where better communication on broader issues would make it possible to attract people and thus fill the void that we will soon be facing. I am really talking about a partnership between your union, which is a very important player in this, and the people who are in charge of recruitment.
:
Thank you, Madam Chair.
[English]
Good afternoon, Madam Chair and members of the committee. My name is Gary Corbett. I am a vice-president of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada. Before that, I held a position as a mining engineer with the Department of Natural Resources Canada.
We are pleased to be here today to offer you our views on the demographic challenges of the federal public sector. Joining me is Ms. Denise Doherty-Delorme. She is the institute's head of research.
Knowledge and innovation play a critical role in determining the economic and the social prosperity of Canada. Investment, jobs, incomes, and our society are directly impacted by the strength and vitality of the knowledge-based sectors and institutions. Canada is not alone in facing revolutionary changes. Every nation, province or state, and city is considering or implementing strategies to respond to the challenges and opportunities presented by the knowledge-based economy.
According to the President of the Public Service Commission's testimony, which we heard on March 22, there has been a shift to more knowledge-based workers in the public service. This shift has resulted in an increase in requirements that has pushed the average age of entry to 35. Moreover, the public service is, on average, older than the general labour force, it will be affected by the baby boom retirement wave sooner than the general labour force, in 2003-04 it had an average age of retirement of almost 58, and it will see the rate of retirement peak in 2012-13.
In 2006, knowledge-based workers, such as scientific and professional workers, and those in the computer systems area represented 58% of federal workers in the core public administration. During the mid-1990s they represented only 41%.
Will the Government of Canada be able to keep up with its staffing if the current age of entry is 35 and the age of retirement is 58? Will all the departments and agencies be able to fulfill their mandates? Today I present the current situation in the public sector and suggest ways to respond to its recruitment and retention challenges.
On the supply side, unemployment is at an all-time low and there is an acute shortage of talent. Employment has been on an upward trend, with average monthly gains of 42,000 new jobs. The competition for employees continues to be tight. According to a report by Deloitte, a shortage of workers exists in science educators to teach the next generation of chemists, health care professionals of all stripes, and design engineers with in-depth technical and interpersonal skills.
Furthermore, exacerbating the problem is the length of time it takes the public service to hire new employees. We have anecdotal evidence that the recruitment process can take up to 18 months. In addition, too many positions are staffed with term and sunset positions, as my colleague from the other union pointed out. Given the opportunity, these new hires may leave for permanent positions elsewhere. Critical talent is scarce and about to become much more so because of two looming trends: the retirement of the baby boomers and the growing skills gap.
On the baby boomers issue, in just a few years an emerging trend will force organizations to pay attention to their critical talent--the retirement of baby boomers, the first crop of which, according to Deloitte, will retire in 2008. The impact will soon be felt. In the public sector, countries such as Canada, Australia, and the United States could lose more than a third of their government employees by 2010. Retirees are also draining much of the working blood out of the health care system, with shortages of nurses and pharmacists being particularly acute.
According to Statistics Canada--as shown on the graph on page 4 of your brief--in the workforce as a whole, the median age among employed women rose from 37 in 1995 to 40 in 2006. Among men it went from 38 to 40. The workforce in the core public administration is much older than in the general workforce. This should be worrisome to Canadians. Among women, the median age rose from 40 in 1995 to 44 in 2006. Among their male counterparts, it went from 44 to 46. In addition, within the core public administration, individuals aged 45 and over accounted for just over half, or 52%, of the total in 2006, compared with just under 39% in the workforce as a whole.
According to the policy research initiative, one in three permanent employees in the federal public service, Canada's largest employer, is 50 years of age or older. Retirement of managers has already started and may peak as early as 2009. For other groups in the federal public service, retirements are expected to peak between 2012 and 2014.
The study also looked at the behavioural differences across employment categories in the federal public service when making the decision to retire. While the average retirement age for all federal employees is between 57 and 59, employees in management, administration, technical and science, and professional categories are more likely than other groups to work beyond the minimum requirements to retire without penalty.
As you can see by figure 2 on page 6 of your brief, the hiring age in the federal public service has been getting higher over the last ten years. For instance, the percentage of new indeterminate appointments under the age of 30 decreased by 33% from 1992 to 2003. Meanwhile, the same percentage of employees appointed at the age of 40 and higher increased by 54% in the same period. There's a shortage of talent.
Many colleges and universities are having trouble meeting the demand for qualified candidates. According to Deloitte again, institutions struggle with limited capacity, obsolete educational models, declining education standards, and the general shift amongst students away from hard-skilled disciplines such as science and engineering.
In fact, the U.S. Department of Education estimates that 60% of all new jobs in the 21st century will require skills that are possessed by only 22% of young people now entering the job market.
Four industries in particular will suffer a mass exodus of employees, among them the public sector. The shortage of workers is not just one of retiring baby boomers. A massive skills gap makes it worse. According to NASA projections, for example, in the U.S., colleges will graduate 198,000 science and engineering students to fill the shoes of over two million U.S. baby boomers scheduled to retire before 2008.
In other areas of specialized education, such as information technology, universities simply can't keep up with demand.
According to a survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers, there is a skills shortage across the country. On a positive note, the Pulse survey of 277 private company CEOs also found that private companies are taking steps to retain their skilled, trained workers. Eight-five percent of companies polled will increase their focus on retention in the coming year. But how will that play out for the public sector?
According to Deloitte, the shortage of workers is not just one of retiring baby boomers but a massive skills gap that makes it worse. Perhaps the most disturbing factor of all, though, is declining educational standards. Many high schools are not keeping pace with increased complexity and rapid technological change facing organizations today. Others are simply not graduating enough students. In some provinces, only 70% of students graduate from high school.
The federal science and technology community secretariat in 2006 surveyed 205 science managers in the ten science-based departments and agencies. The findings revealed that two-thirds of the respondents believe that the financial resources provided will not be sufficient to meet anticipated HR needs in their departments. They also anticipate difficulty in recruiting staff in research, applied science, and technical services.
A summary of the survey suggests that researchers will be the most difficult to recruit and retain over the next three years, and the major factor to recruitment is budget constraints.
Almost 70% feel that the financial resources they will receive over the next three years will not be sufficient to meet their HR requirements. They also mention the shortage of qualified candidates as the second largest concern. There is a significant difference in the compensation offered to more experienced or mid- to senior-level scientists in comparison with the private sector and academia.
Uncompetitive remuneration and availability of facilities and/or equipment cause many scientists to leave the public sector early or midway through their careers. It is difficult to replace them.
What is the federal government's response? When the President of the Public Service Commission was asked by this committee last week to address the issue of recruitment and retention, she spoke of the PSC's mission and mandate, which is staffing. Yet she stated that the PSC can only speak to its experience to date on the supply side of the numbers: 19.5 million visits on the website jobs.gc.ca, a screening tool that processed 920,000 applications between April 2006 and January 2007. The institute would like to point out that the number of hits on a website alone is not an indicator of how well the federal government is dealing with this recruitment and retention issue.
In order for each and every department and agency to meet the expectations of the Canadian public, they must continue to attract and retain professionals. A critical mass of talented, highly educated people is needed in each domain to produce the synergy required to achieve results. Yet many departments and agencies are already understaffed. Professionals in the public service are already overstretched as a result of cutbacks in personnel since the early 1990s.
:
I'm almost done, Madame.
The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada has gathered input from its 50,000 members and from its work with the departments and agencies on the issues of recruitment and retention. Institute members are vital. The institute offers the following advice regarding the need to attract qualified candidates, not only directly after graduation but at mid-career as well.
To attract the best and the brightest, the federal government needs to address salaries, infrastructure, and resources.
Entry-level salaries for professionals are too low. Several classifications have posted entry-level salaries in the range of $24,000. Recent graduates, especially those with high debt loads after university, may be unwilling to take a job because it doesn't pay the bills.
Crumbling federal infrastructure is not attractive to someone who has a choice of where to work. Therefore, there is a need for better infrastructure for scientists, researchers, and regulators. That says volumes to the resources that are put into these places.
Finally, because of the pace of technological innovation, there's a need to allow time and financial resources for professionals to attend conferences and symposia. Working collaboratively with other professionals is of utmost importance to our members to keep abreast of developments across the world and is a proven mechanism for encouraging innovation.
To retain qualified and experienced professionals, the federal government needs to address pension issues and knowledge transfer opportunities. With respect to the federal pension plan, many professionals cannot fully benefit from it because of mid-career entry and late starting age into the public service.
Finally, there is an urgent need for more incentives to retain older workers. This entails improving the flexibility of hours of work conditions in a way that will not hinder the pensions. Mentoring and knowledge transfer must not only be valued but encouraged and facilitated.
Madam Chair, members of the committee, I thank you for the opportunity to present this today and I look forward to your questions.
:
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I am going to do exactly what I did a little earlier for the witnesses we heard before you. Like Mr. Simard, I am wondering whether there is any hope. Would you say that your comments—I won't say your vision—apply to all of Canada? I'm asking that question because I want to talk about a region I feel particularly strongly about—my own, which is the Lower St. Lawrence and Gaspé region.
The Institut Maurice-Lamontagne is in the riding of one of my colleagues, in Sainte-Flavie. They carry out ocean research there. As you know, we're talking about Rimouski. It has connections to all the learning institutions as regards ocean sciences, including the University of Quebec in Rimouski, the Quebec Maritime Institute, the Rimouski Ocean Sciences Institute, research centres, and so on. I could name you several more.
I am talking about young people and some who are less young, of both female and male researchers. I see people who are very happy to work for the federal public service. Not only are they happy with their job, but they are also happy to be living in a wonderful region and to enjoy good quality of life living close to an estuary, their family, and so on, being able to go hiking, engage in recreational activities, go kayaking and do things that they may not necessarily find elsewhere. Is that what you are also hearing? Like your union colleagues that came before you, you talked about practical issues such as salaries, structures and resources. Of course, all of that is part of it. Someone would not agree to work for a pittance, but at the same time, there are other things in life. There is the future and everything that entails. Do you consider that? You talk in very rational terms—only about working conditions, salaries and retirement, because people have to work 30 or 40 years. Those are obviously factors. But there are other ones as well. Is the situation the same all across Canada or do you consider the fact that, in some regions, there are quite considerable differences?
:
Thank you, Chair. And thank you to our witnesses for being here today and providing an articulate overview of the issue.
I want to go back to the comments I made to the witnesses from PSAC about the whole issue of temporary workers. I know in terms of your membership--I mentioned in my comments, and I believe you were present--that temporary workers are now being used for jobs that aren't just administrative. Most of us--I certainly--would have believed that the federal government relied on temporary agencies to fill in the gaps, as it says in the standing offers, when people are sick or there's a change in dimensions within the public service and there's some catch-up needed. I mentioned and underlined the passport crisis we're now facing. We wish they'd hire more temporary services to help out there.
That said, I'm noting here, on the order paper data that I got back, that we're talking about.... I'll just break it down for you and the committee. The top five departmental users of temporary services since 2001 are the following: Health Canada, National Defence, Public Works, Industry, and Environment Canada. I assume you have many members in each of these departments.
I have a question for you. It probably isn't a surprise to you, but it was a surprise to me. When you talk about the issue of retention and the fact that we have a demographic shift, and the boom, bust, and echo thesis, which we've all probably heard about, it seems pretty simple that if you're going to retain people, you don't make temporary services your outpost for the public service. You actually make sure that your public service is in charge of that. When 45,000 jobs were shed in this town in 1995 as a result of the budget cutbacks, we thought we'd built up capacity again, and here we are looking at runaway costs for temporary services.
I want your comments on your concerns about temporary hires and the fact that we have epidemiologists, pharmacists, long-term professional jobs that require credentials and a lot of education being outsourced, if you will, and we are hiring temporary firms to do this hiring. I'd like your concerns on that and on some of the issues it raises in terms of retaining people and dealing with this gap that we're going to be confronted with.
:
I just want to point out two firms that receive the most money from government. Since 2001, one has received $96 million from the federal government for temporary services. Another, which is an adjunct of this company, has received $23 million since 2005.
It seems to me we almost have these satellite public services that exist outside of the formal public service. When we look at the dilemma here and how to retain people, value for money is something as well. Hopefully the budgetary officer, who as part of will overlook spending--not after it's spent, which is the Auditor General's job, but before--will take a look at this. The value-for-money argument is one that I don't think has been addressed.
Before the Christmas holidays I had three town halls on foreign credentials and the labour market with members who are newcomers to our country. There were engineers, doctors, people from right across the professional gambit, and they all want to work. They're all qualified, but they can't get into the public service. I submit to this committee that when 35,200 college and university graduates applied for jobs last year--as was submitted by Ms. Barrados--and only 550 were hired, and half of them were for term positions, I think it's pretty obvious what the problem is. There's no room at the inn.
There are plenty of qualified people. Granted, we have a crisis down the road if you look at ages, but we are dealing with the here and now. The here and now for me is that we need to hire people, commit to people, and commit to people who are newcomers, because we know that's 100% where we'll get our new employees from. When I hear from the public sector unions that they're having problems in terms of retention, we only have to look as far as the budgets and the amount of money we're spending on temporary hires. What kind of commitment is that? I think that's sending a message to people that “We want you, but only for a week. See you later.”
My last question is on protection of your pensions. I know there's some court action with others to make sure the moneys that are there for your pensions in the long term will be vested, and people can be assured that when they retire their pensions will be there for them. You mention your concern that many professionals cannot fully benefit because of mid-career entry or late starting age into the public service. I know that in other professions in other sectors that's a problem. Do you have some ideas on how that can be addressed?