Thank you.
Let's hope the government moves forward. We will try to remind the government of it as often as possible. The parliamentary secretary is here with us, so I hope he's taking it all under advisement.
In the budget analysis, one of the problems I see has to do with the issue of transparency. In fact, it shows in your analysis as well. To see from the angle that interests me, I'll make a comparison. At the time when Mr. Paul Martin was the Minister of Finance, my predecessor and Bloc Québécois critic on the subject found the government's trick for budgets: It systematically overestimated its expenditures, and therefore achieved a balance or ran a slight deficit. At the end of the fiscal year, it could always claim that, in the end, the situation was better than what was expected.
I'd like to know your opinion of government forecasting when it comes to expenditure growth.
At the same time, the latest data from public accounts shows that the government left $41 billion on the table in lapsed appropriations. They had essentially been voted on, but a part of them weren't voted. The most recent fiscal year for which numbers are available is 2021‑22. When I asked Department of Finance officials to tell us where they were in the budget and how to take them into account, they told me that they were unable to answer those questions and that they weren't systematically included.
I'd like to hear your comments on all that.