Public Accounts committee  Again, I think it's very difficult to get that information during the fiscal year. If a department exceeds its vote at the end of the year, we would know that, but we are not in a position to be able to, of those virtually thousands of votes, determine on a given daily or weekly

Public Accounts committee  As we come to the end of a fiscal year, the department will know whether in fact it exceeded its overall budget, and it will also be able to track, and should be able to track during the year, where it is.

Public Accounts committee  They're very much required as departments, as is the senior executive, including the deputy who's the accounting officer of the department, to ensure that they are basically within their vote. That is the responsibility of each department. It's been very rarely the case, in my ex

Public Accounts committee  I think, first and foremost, the trend line is a reflection of the increase in spending by the government each year. There has been a significant increase in spending year over year that was announced as part of each budget each year, and as a result of these being in the budget,

Public Accounts committee  Yes, it's moving from deficit to surplus. David, do you want to comment on that?

Public Accounts committee  David, would you comment?

Public Accounts committee  At this point, no. We are in agreement with the Auditor General in terms of her recommendations in her report. I can't be more categorical than that. We think it's an excellent report and we're quite comfortable with the recommendations she's put on the table.

Public Accounts committee  We are putting in a plan. We are recommending a plan to the president, who will bring this forward to cabinet, basically following through on the AG's report and how we can address the overall concerns she's raised and how we can respond to the recommendations.

Public Accounts committee  I think the honourable member will be the best judge of the overall response to the AG's report when the government comes out with its plan.

Public Accounts committee  Again, as you know, some of the recommendations the Auditor General has proposed are at a fairly general level. Sometimes the devil is in the details. You're going to have to be the judge of how we've responded to the somewhat higher-level set of recommendations and what we actua

Public Accounts committee  I won't comment on where we have been, except to say that if you look back over the past decade, we came in with the expenditure management system back in the early 1990s, after a period of time when the existing A-base had been reviewed on an ongoing basis each and every year. T

Public Accounts committee  Yes.

Public Accounts committee  If you look at the process, that's in fact what the government does. We submit the mains, as you know, every year to seek parliamentary approval. For those items that cannot be put into the mains—and that happens for a whole number of reasons—supplementary estimates are tabled, e

Public Accounts committee  No, if you have looked over the last number of years, any department that decides to spend in advance of receiving the appropriate authority through Parliament does so very much at their own risk, because Parliament can decide at any point in time not to approve that particular s

Public Accounts committee  Thank you. Merci. That would be the approach. We would want to outline our implementation plan very clearly in order to ensure that we have an effective expenditure management system in place. This will take time, as I said in my opening statement. Clearly there is going to b