Evidence of meeting #136 for Finance in the 42nd Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was million.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Chief Financial Officer and Assistant Commissioner, Finance and Administration Branch, Canada Revenue Agency
Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the question and the point of clarification. Sometimes we use words interchangeably. In order to create a reserve, you take resources from other areas of the organization and you put it into a reserve. When you have a pressure in any organization that you're working with and it's immediate and it's urgent, you will look at where you have potential flexibility within existing resources to address that pressure.
The agency has reserve amounts of money that can help support those pressures, and it also has the ability to potentially take resources from other areas of the organization, to put towards pressure. That's all within the purview when the money is provided to the agency. It's not doing anything illegally. It isn't not delivering on the commitment that has been made.
It's looking at, for example, if you get money to staff a position for an entire year, but that person doesn't start until three quarters into the year, you have savings that you're able to reallocate to other pressures in the organization. This is something that we do on a regular basis. It's just part of how we make sure we use our resources the best way possible.
There are the two aspects that we do have, and we're doing it all within the rules and the guidelines that we have to manage the resources within the agency.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Wayne Easter
Thank you.
Thank you for your testimony, folks.
We'll have to go to voting on the supplementary estimates.
DEPARTMENT OF FINANCE
Vote 1c—Program expenditures.........$3,892,641
(Vote 1c agreed to on division)
CANADA REVENUE AGENCY
Vote 1c—Operating expenditures..........$19,241,916
(Vote 1c agreed to on division)
Shall I report the votes on supplementary estimates (C) 2017-18 to the House?
Liberal