Yes, I'm familiar with that. Thank you for that summary. It's a good summary for all committee members to hear.
The issue of expenditure management is one that I am particularly concerned about, not only because of my experience here in the Treasury Board but also as a result of my role in my previous department. My concern is that when we are initiating new programs, are we also looking at expenditures on programs that are no longer priorities, or that priorities have shifted? I was pleased to see that was one of the Auditor General's concerns as well.
As a result, we as a cabinet have undertaken to make rigorous examinations of all new spending proposals. We are not simply looking at the value of those new spending proposals and assessing the quality and cost-effectiveness of them. We are also taking explicit account of the funding, performance, and resource requirements of existing programs, so that as we're implementing new programs we're also taking a look at how money is being spent in existing programs.
I don't know if most Canadians realize this, but one of the points that was brought to my attention was that in six years, the A-base budget of the Government of Canada went from $45 billion to $90 billion. I thought, “That's a remarkable increase in only six years. Is there something we should be doing to make sure that as we're adding certain things to the A-base—essentially the portion of the budget that rolls over every year and is spent almost automatically—we are reviewing those existing programs?”
So the commitment of our government is to do that through the expenditure management review program, as commented on by the Auditor General,