Government Operations committee  From a professional accounting point of view, moving to an accrual accounting basis and consistency at the ministry levels, compared to the summary level, is certainly a preferred direction. The timing of how you get there and when you go and the complexities of doing that are mo

Government Operations committee  There's no question cash is easier for most people to understand, because in their day-to-day living they understand cash. Part of it is just the move to accrual and understanding what it means and a little more complication in their lives, and people don't like to be more compli

Government Operations committee  I'll just reiterate, I think, what Jim and Arn have said. I think it's important that you get a plan in place. With the complexity of it, it is a multi-year plan that does get buy-in, certainly, of the major critical ministries that are impacted by it. I think also what helped

Government Operations committee  Yes. Just to comment, one of the things the Government of Ontario had to look at was what the most cost-effective way of implementing it was. With the multitude of systems, and the upgrade that would be required to each system and the ongoing maintenance, from just a value-for-mo

Government Operations committee  Just with respect to Ontario, we are not legislated to follow the public sector accounting standards, but we have chosen to follow them. We have been in compliance with those standards for a number of years. We believe that the independent standards provide a basis of consistenc

Government Operations committee  I thank you for the comment on being almost perfect, but I would say we're still striving for that perfection. From my point of view, when the decision was made in 2002 that we should move forward and implement it, that's when most of the technological efforts started. I think t

Government Operations committee  I can speak to the approach we used in Ontario. We formed a unit within the comptroller's office that was focused on modern comptrollership training. Some of it was internal staff that we acquired. Some of it was contracted. But it was a program to upgrade and educate the ministr

Government Operations committee  There was no push-back after it was required by legislation that they do their estimates this way. Our strategy was to see how we could help them to put it in place.

Government Operations committee  When we implemented the systems, it wasn't just for accrual. There were advantages in centralizing the processing of certain information. It was more effective and some of the data structures for the exchange of information were better. So in Ontario, there were a number of objec

Government Operations committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. Just to pick up where Jim left off, first of all, I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to meet with the committee and to share our experience with accrual budgeting. My name is Bruce Bennett, and I am the acting provincial controller in the Treasury