I couldn't agree more. I see your role as one of building confidence for Canadians that what they're being told is accurate. I know that was the government's intention when we brought that forward, certainly not as one that would kind of see behind the curtains and go on goose chases on behalf of the opposition.
Largely the federal budget is a document that has a lot of commitments that have already been made. A fair portion of the federal budget is spent annually for commitments that have been made. In that, we talk about provincial transfers, social transfers, equalization, and so forth. I know my colleague from Ajax--Pickering is pleased that we now have per capita transfers in the province of Ontario brought forward by this government.
But last year we had three independent fiscal forecasts, and we also had the forecast from the federal government. I think what we've done is try to really open things up, make it very open so that Canadians have an understanding how these forecasts are made so we don't have these large surprise forecasts at the end of the year, being forecasted to be one number and then suddenly being another much more significant number. We've worked to make that much more open.
Unfortunately, all of them were wrong last year. They were all lower. Maybe you can give your opinion on that. Does that speak to the caution that goes into planning these numbers, that they're putting a lot of prudence into these numbers to make sure that they're right? If anything, they're under on the surplus, but they're not going to go the other way and be wrong to the point where you'd risk a potential deficit.
Is that why you see that all three private forecasters and the government forecast were under with the surplus that actually came in?