Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Minister. It's always a pleasure to have you join us and to talk about our main estimates and supplementary estimates.
I wanted to highlight this a little bit initially to make sure we have this clear for me in my own mind, but I think it's also good for the discussion as we go forward here to understand the process on main estimates and supplementary estimates, etc.
I know the federal process works quite differently from the provincial process, which some of us may be used to. The provincial process has a system where your budget, your estimates of revenue, and your estimates of expenditure essentially all come out at the same time each and every year, so it's very fair to compare from year to year your estimates of expenditures from one document to another.
By federal law, the federal government has to have its expenditures put out by March 1. They have to be shown for the following fiscal year. Quite often, as is the case this year, that is before a budget is actually tabled.
From my understanding, we cannot have anything in main estimates that may come in a future budget but is not in a budget as of today. We have to be looking at estimates based on essentially the previous year's budget that came out. That can make some real challenges for us as we try to compare a main estimate from one year to a main estimate from another year. In fact to a large degree I would say we're trying to compare an apple and an orange lots of times, which gets us in a lot of hot water. I think it's good to set that out.
In fact the savings identified, for example, in budget 2012 cannot be reflected at all in these particular main estimates, because those are things that were brought forward afterward. There are changes and adjustments constantly being made. Again I think it's worth reiterating the fact that it's basically fundamentally flawed to compare main estimate to main estimate, because you have not taken into account your supplementaries, your changes, and your new upcoming budget that will have a major effect typically on the main estimates that have come out at this point today.
Again I think that's the parameter we really want to approach this from and make sure we're not trying to compare an apple and an orange, but compare what's really happening in programs and what the estimates reflect as of today with the knowledge that there are going to be changes.
We know we're dealing with supplementaries (C) here, which are asking for more funding on several fronts. Two examples are $24 million for the Nature Conservancy and $21.1 million for the international climate change strategy 2012. These are items that did come forward in 2012 that wouldn't have shown in estimates 2012. I think it's important we have that context as we go forward in these discussions.
Maybe you could comment on that, and let me know if I am on the right track in my understanding of that.