Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll take a shot at it, because I really do sincerely appreciate the question.
I feel like we have gone through these ebbs and flows where we've tried to provide more and less information and gauge the utility of such information to Parliamentarians and other commentators, Canadians, and folks like the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
I can't comment much on the seventies, eighties and nineties. In the early 2000s, we transitioned between cash and accrual, so we have found ourselves in this weird space where we budget on accrual now. We have that difficult intersection between our accrual communication of what we're spending versus what you see on a cash basis in the estimates.
There is that confusion. It is at times a very difficult translation. Lending that's done on a cash basis has a different profile on the accrual basis that we demonstrate in the budget.
We work with the PBO to try to add a degree of precision so that our documents are usable to Parliamentarians and understandable. We've tried to create crosswalks between the budget and the estimates so you can see the numbers coming out in the budget and how they crosswalk into estimates, which are the appropriation acts parliamentarians approve for departmental spending.
I'm not trying to ramble, but we would be happy to seek your feedback on how we may.... It's a 750-page document. We're taking all the space we need to try to make sure that we're communicating appropriately and that there's real accountability for where the dollars are going.
I can point to instances—I've been in this job for six years now—where we've tried to provide supplementary information and annexes, having got a lot of endorsement from the PBO and other people who read it. In all honesty, we'd would love to try to find that sweet spot so that the financial information in the budget is usable and understandable.
If you have of examples from generations past of budgets that served more of a practical function, then we'd happy to connect with you and your office and take that feedback on—absolutely.