Government Operations committee  The bare-bones reporting that happens at the federal level is very general, frankly, compared with the wealth of information contained in the SAP servers at DND or Finance Canada. It's a matter of defining what you want; I don't think it's a matter of the data not existing. I don't think parliamentarians should be concerned that data do not exist on expenditures, of all things, or the number of employees.

Government Operations committee  I'm not familiar particularly with those initiatives. Given the size of the federal government, I think you're probably right that any question could be answered by someone. Someone has that answer. In the same way that I'm trying to estimate the number of jobs that will be lost, someone knows this answer.

Government Operations committee  It's a challenge, I'm sure, for all sorts of organizations and at all levels of government. They'll pass a budget, but those implementations won't happen for a quarter, and so on, so they float it over that quarter and assume that expenditures are going to be the same. I don't think this is necessarily a challenge of computational need.

Government Operations committee  It's difficult to say what process could be employed. First of all, if you don't have the information that variances are happening, there's nothing you can do about it, right? The estimates come in; then you have supplementary estimates, and there's some detail in there and some detail in the quarterly departmental reports, but if you wanted to put an aggregate picture together from purely those reports, I think you would be really challenged to do so.

Government Operations committee  I think there are good reports that the government publishes. They are bare bones, to be sure, but they could be the foundation of much better reporting. I'm not sure that we should necessarily throw out the process. I think that the report on plans and priorities, for instance, is a good foundational document that could be built out to become much more than it is.

Government Operations committee  I think that the accrual system is the appropriate one at the federal level. The main estimates are still in cash, and it makes sense that they be in cash in the sense that the government is authorizing a certain amount of money to be spent. I think what is missing from this equation is a reconciliation between the cash and the accrual from the main estimates so that you could see those main estimates on an accrual basis as well as see them on a cash basis.

Government Operations committee  Yes, that's right.

Government Operations committee  I'm not sure I'm equipped to answer the question. It may well be institutional momentum: this is the way the reports have always been done, so this is the way they should be done today. Maybe it's going to require a shakeup from this committee, with the input of experts, saying that this is the format you want these reports to come in and that you want them provided in that format.

Government Operations committee  I'm not an expert on the government accounting systems. Maybe that's part of the problem. Maybe it's all being filed away on paper somewhere. I think what is clear is that this amount of detail, and much more detail, is routinely available for much smaller organizations, whether it's private sector or public sector at other levels of government.

Government Operations committee  I'm not sure what happened the year before.

Government Operations committee  I think this committee should require each of these departments to submit those reports on time and that they be full and complete. CIDA is an example of when that hasn't happened, and that's something that could be corrected.

Government Operations committee  I certainly don't think that there has been a technological regression. A much smaller level of government is the City of Ottawa; its council is a good example of a government producing budgets with a lot more detail than what we find at the federal level. I think there is plenty of work that can be done in terms of making these documents more transparent.

Government Operations committee  Let me be more specific. I was referring to particular departments. I think there is a fair amount of standardization across the RPPs, for instance, and that's definitely a good thing. I would point you to the 2011-12 Canadian International Development Agency RPP, which essentially does not make estimates going forward.

Government Operations committee  It was the 2011 report, so I—

Government Operations committee  This may not be as relevant to passing the main estimates, for instance, but I would certainly encourage departments taking major policy steps—such as buying the F-35—to provide updates on how much they think it's going to cost and how much it's going to cost over time. I know the Parliamentary Budget Officer, who is an officer of Parliament, has certainly weighed in on this issue, and I think it's important for government departments themselves to keep up with the current news on the F-35s and update their numbers, or not, but at least lay their methodology out for examination by parliamentarians and outside observers.