With regard to the Auditor General, most of the concerns the Auditor General was expressing were regarding the use of Treasury Board vote 5 for grant payments. There was one in particular following 9/11, in which there was a grant payment that was made to Transport Canada to supplement the airlines' lost revenues. She questioned the fact that Treasury Board vote 5 was provided to Transport Canada and then Transport Canada provided the money to the airlines in question.
The Treasury Board policy was that because Transport Canada had the relationship with the airlines, they were the ones that should have made the payment. She actually didn't question the use of the vote 5 for urgency; she was just saying Treasury Board should have made the payment directly to the airlines. It's a grey area, and we just said Treasury Board doesn't have that relationship with the airlines; it's Transport Canada, and they should be administering the program because it's their mandate to do that. We have firmed up the vote wording considerably to make it very clear what we're using it for.
Regarding the question of urgency, I think in some cases the reason they were making the statement was that you'd have a budget announcement, and then two years later the money would flow because it hadn't been included in the main estimates and because all the normal executive approvals hadn't been in place, and then the department would finally come in, have the approval necessary, and seek vote 5. She would question then why it would be considered urgent, and at that point it was just a question of timing in terms of when the approvals came through.
Once the agreements were signed and the payment had to be made, it was deemed to be urgent. That sort of dialogue was going on. We have firmed up a lot in terms of the interpretation of the definition of urgency, to clarify a bit more on how we use vote 5 in those instances.