Thank you, Mr. Chair. Certainly that is an issue that has been identified for us over the past few years. Prior to amalgamation of the departments, each department had their own HR plan and their own risk management plan, and in those risk management plans and HR plans, this was identified as one of those key issues that we needed to work on going forward.

As we went through the amalgamation process, a lot of that succession took place. We had a number of retirements of key people across the departments, both in headquarters and in other regions, and we were able to use the capacity of the amalgamated department to step in and fill many of those vacancies. We were able to retain a lot of that corporate knowledge and continue to have strong long-term people in those key positions.

As we move forward, we are doing a number of things now in the Department of Infrastructure, which are building on the tools that we had in place before, things like management training programs, developmental transfer assignments, and building that capacity from within. Also, I think the government widespread has this issue. There is lots of work that the Department of Human Resources is doing as well, in providing opportunities for employees to train, get broader experience by moving to other departments, and moving around within the public service as well to build that capacity for the greater public service.

It is one of our priorities. It is one of the things in our risk management framework that we have identified, and all of our senior managers are working on to build succession within their divisions and in their departments. That is no different than the one that we are speaking about here today. Thank you, Mr. Chair.