Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, through the Premier, I gave direction and guidance to the Ministers that the Premier would like to see us hire as many students as we did last year. We looked at the numbers. We are down from last year right now. As of June 2nd, we hired 217. Last year around this time, I think we were up to 260-something. So we are certainly down from where we were last year. As a result, the Premier has sent a reminder letter to all the Ministers and the deputies today indicating that we have to get our numbers up. We are committed to getting to the same type of numbers that we had last year. I can't speak for the other departments. But I have given direction to both my deputies that I would like to meet and, if possible, exceed last year's number, but certainly meet. The Department of Human Resources is very close to meeting our numbers from last year. The Department of Health and Social Services is a little bit down. But we are looking and we are trying to find ways to hire as many students as we can.
The Member is right. The departments do utilize some of their dollars through vacancies to help fund some of the casuals. If there are no vacancies, obviously it does make it difficult. But we know that we run, at any given time, around 400 vacancies. It is constantly changing positions. But it is a similar number, constantly changing positions. I don't know what some of the departments are saying to some of the summer students around the layoffs. If they are, I would suggest that that isn't consistent with the message that Cabinet is giving the deputies.
As I said, the Premier has sent out an e-mail today indicating that he would like all the departments to at least meet last year's numbers. The summer is not over. We are still hiring. We are still looking to hire and we will continue to hire. We will work hard to reach last year's numbers.