At 11:00 p.m., hardly anyone is left in the building, and the lights are on everywhere. I do not mind having a night light, but this one lights up half of the city. We should give this serious thought. We could save a bit of money. No one, except the government, leaves the lights on all night. Let me give you a good suggestion: we must check into this. We will bring this up again next year to see where we are. I suppose that this will be a pilot project for the next 10 years.
With regard to the $138.6 million estimates, 137 million will be spent on the increased costs brought about by the signing of the collective agreements with public servants. I think that the collective agreement was not signed recently, it was not signed last week. Months have gone by, perhaps a whole year. It seems to me that you should have thought of this when you made the estimates. How come nobody could see in advance that $137 million in wages would have to be added?
Normally, we prepare an annual budget. To do this, we look at the previous year's budget, and we see what is new for the coming year. If there are salary increases, we ask for a supplementary estimate. This is how we proceed. Nevertheless, year in and year out, people go through all kinds of amazing adventures to obtain new budgets.
Could you explain to us how this budget is managed? Otherwise, we can say that it is an open buffet, if we are short of money, we will come back before this necessary evil, namely the committee, and will spend an hour of torture with the committee members. Afterward, we will get what we asked for and we will carry on. How do you go about estimating your budgets at the beginning of each year?