I think the question of lapses in budgets and budgetary authority is actually a big issue. Could the role of the parliamentary budget officer actually bring transparency to some of the issues that underlie the budgetary lapse? I think, just as background, in terms of numbers that underscore basically the point you're making, there's been a fairly dramatic increase overall across government in the size of those lapses across departments. It's gone roughly from 3% of budgetary authority to something in the neighbourhood of 6% over the last six, seven, or eight years.
As well, over that time we've seen a fairly dramatic increase in spending overall. While spending remains relatively low in terms of historical patterns relative to GDP, there have been significant increases in budgets, particularly one-year-out kinds of budgets, in the past while. I think departments have difficulty getting appropriate authority, through Treasury Board, to spend that money in the first year. As a result, a lot of this money ends up lapsing, as you've noted.
I think it could almost be a piece of ongoing analytical research. After the public accounts are released, we could prepare an analytical report by the parliamentary budget officer that would explain the lapses and the lapse experiences across different departments and agencies. It could be a kind of ongoing regular report that would put you in a better position to actually start putting pressure on some departments to get at some of the reasons for what's going on, be it INAC or other departments.