Mr. MacDiarmid, it's a pleasure to meet you.
You know that this is an extremely complex and serious situation. When it comes to atomic energy, society makes a choice. One of the reasons we think this must not be done at fire sale speed, the previous Liberal governments invested in this sector, is precisely because it is an investment. It is a little unfortunate to see that the government wants to proceed quickly and we are not sure of how things are proceeding at present. I have some questions to ask you.
I am going to talk to you first about the situation of employees. You said, correctly, that we have to protect jobs, that you still have contracts to honour, that it is essential to have this expertise and we must not lose it. Now in your resources plan dated January 25, 2011, we can see that by 2013, the number of engineers will fall from 859 to 340. That means that ultimately, there is going to be collateral damage, that we, as Canadians, will suffer a loss that may have an impact on the expertise of Atomic Energy of Canada itself. Is it not a little hard not to believe that what we are doing is getting rid of an asset, of something important to Canadians? And jobs will be lost. The decision to cut more staff was a difficult one to make, I assume?