I think the Minister wants to take an early weekend, but I think this is the place where I should be asking questions about staffing appeals. What I find difficult in this process is we've already been through the business plans, there has been some really good discussion back and forth, and then we get a completely different document that I guess is not really as detailed or well laid out as the business plans, but we're trying to probe and get some issues onto the table. It's not always clear to me where they arise in the main estimates, so that might be an observation I offer in my reply to the budget address. The issue of staffing appeals, it's my understanding that staffing appeals, the numbers have been going down, but also the length of time that an appeal can be filed has also been reduced in regulations.
There's a whole number of reasons why people are excluded from even appealing a staffing action, so I guess the issue is one of fairness. How is the department looking at the issue of fairness in staffing appeals, particularly by parties? How many may not be government employees because I think we want to make sure that we have a robust system of hiring folks and that people don’t feel that there's bias in any way in the hiring process. But if you're not even eligible to file an appeal or you have a very restricted right to file an appeal, people start to lose, or could lose, confidence in the hiring process itself. So I'm wondering if the Minister can just tell me how the department has considered these issues in the context of staffing appeals. Thank you, Mr. Chair.