Mr. Chair, again I will say that you’re looking at the fact that we’re proposing to lay off 135 employees with these competitions. Of 500, I’m not sure how many of them are essential to the operations of the government, other than maybe nurses, teachers and a few other essential services. I still find it mind-boggling that we’re looking to bring on 500 new people. There are 500 competitions out there, and I’m not sure what they are. I suppose I could find out; I’ve just got to go on the web site.
I’d like to ask the Minister if there’s an opportunity here, maybe, to revisit this whole scenario rather than lay off 135 employees. Why not cancel a couple of hundred job competitions and maybe look at keeping these 135 employees, or as many as we can keep? I wonder if there’s an opportunity here to revisit that and come back to this committee with some options.