I have my own personal opinions, which I probably shouldn't express in committee, but I think there is a lack of senior management desire to move to this.
They have been studying this for eight years. There have been recommendations from the public accounts committee, where the government says it's studying.... We bring up comparisons with France. France doesn't even have a set of summary financial statements. They're trying to move there. They're actually coming, I know, to see how Canada does it. So there are only a very few countries that actually produce accrual-based financial statements--England, New Zealand, and Australia being the leaders in that. They've all moved to accrual appropriation. Many of the provinces have done that.
There was a survey done by the Public Sector Accounting Board that indicated that all the provinces and territories are moving there, and yet the Government of Canada continues to study it. From what I heard this morning, I think they're still studying it, quite frankly, which I think puts in doubt the whole move to accrual accounting in the first place.
If we're going to stay on cash, we're not getting the benefits of having made the huge investment to move to accrual accounting. Big systems were put in, much more complex calculations, for example, of taxes receivable and accrual of tax revenues, and recording all the costs of all the capital assets. It was a huge exercise to do all that, and if we're not taking full advantage of it...I guess I'm perplexed as to why we don't move there.