Thank you, Madam Chairman, and thank you very much to the Auditor General and the department for being here to talk about these important issues today.
I want to go back to chapter 8. I would like to ask the department a question about the budget for the core funding. The report says that the core funding for the three programs that were audited had decreased significantly over that three-year period, and by quite big amounts—10% for the product safety program, 32% for the drug products program, and 50% for the medical devices program.
As well as that, funds for special initiatives, which were under other budgets, were not always spent for the purposes approved by the Treasury Board, but were reallocated to other programs within the directorate.
My question would be whether the department informed Parliament of its intention to reallocate these resources or how that determination was made. Does that information come through to Parliament in the form of supplementary estimates, or what is the reporting mechanism for something like that?