It's in that context that we asked the Secretary of the Treasury Board for information on departmental reference levels for the current year and going out for the next four years.
We are quite aware that there is a risk we may not see the kind of low spending growth that's inherent in the government's projections right now. You can see direct program spending growing at about 2% in the last two years of the projection period. We've never seen numbers like that. Even in the last four years of the five-year projection you have direct program spending growth at roughly 4%, which is very low.
We've gone through all the major components of spending and we compared growth rates in those projections vis-à-vis the past 5, 10, 15, and 20 years, so we're quite aware that achieving that spending growth target will be difficult.