Sure. We're in the process of trying to get that trademarked as a Calgary national term eventually.
The concept really is that we've been trying to find ways to set good, simple rules for spending parameters around budget management. Oftentimes we hear and see population and inflation as sort of that mantra, but that doesn't necessarily enable governments to accommodate economic growth and the pressures that result.
So we've come up with the concept. We call it the smart spending bandwidth, but it's this bandwidth that suggests limiting or tracking government expenditure increases to between either real GDP and inflation or population growth and inflation. That range will change depending on the cycle, so in low economic times population growth and inflation will be higher. In better economic times GDP and inflation growth will be higher, but it always enables that rationale.
It's a very simple rule to follow. It suggests that if we keep our expenditures within this range, we're spending within our means—real growth in the economy or real growth in the population. That obviously is a suggestion for spending increases.
Of course there are suggestions about whether we're spending optimally at this point in time, and that goes back to some of the initiatives you mentioned—for example, the reductions you had been talking about, Minister Clement's initiative in terms of looking for some savings in that regard. Ideally, we'd find some savings in that regard from an efficiency perspective, but we continue with tracking expenditure increases in a reasonable manner linked to growth.