I think the challenge is the various financial exercises throughout the calendar or fiscal year and the timing and such.
The production of the main estimates, which you have before you, you can see by the size of that document that we have to put it to bed, so to speak, from an input perspective, in late January, which is well before the federal budget has been tabled. As a matter of course, the main estimates do not reflect any new funding initiatives that will be announced subsequent to this document’s being finalized.
Our opportunity to get those funding initiatives in front of committees and Parliament is through the supplementary estimates processes. There are three opportunities to do that.
First, supplementary estimates (A) we typically try to get out as soon as possible after the budget, for any very high-profile items that we can get through the approval process, and for officials. Just because it has been announced in the budget doesn't mean it's automatic. There is a challenge and review process that we go through with Treasury Board ministers.
Second, supplementary estimates (B) traditionally is where you'll see, for Finance Canada, should we get any voted resources, those appear in our supplementary estimates (B), normally around October or November, because that has given us time to do the due diligence and process through Treasury Board.
Then, the final supplementary estimates, supplementary estimates (C), just before the year closes, traditionally for us is just updating our statutory forecast. Should there be any need to realign resources between votes, that's our last opportunity to come before committee and Parliament to seek those approvals.
I understand that it's a snapshot of a bit of a moving picture. There are the mains, and then the three supplementary estimates.