Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Smith and Mr. Enns, for being with us this morning. We appreciate your testimony and your help.
I don't have any specific concerns with the estimates that our committee is responsible for this morning. I'm quite comfortable that we got great clarity on them from our previous witnesses.
However, I just want to talk about the global sense of your responsibilities within Treasury Board, especially at a time when I think Canadians generally expect that the Canadian government is constraining its spending. Canadian families from coast to coast have to make their budgets work and constrain their spending so it fits the income they are making at a time of an economic downturn. I think Canadians generally expect that the government is undertaking the same types of cost-cutting measures, and looking at all the ways it can save.
You, at Treasury Board, are responsible for the challenge function when different departments come to you looking for additional money. I'm wondering if you can give me a little bit of a breakdown of the components of the challenge function. Then I have a couple of questions I'd like to ask related to that process.