We certainly appreciate your being here this morning and answering our questions, and your waiting for us while we attended the vote.
My first question is an overall question, and I think Treasury Board has been designated to answer it.
We've been studying the operating budget freeze plan, and we've known that there is going to be about $300 million in savings to be identified in this fiscal year. We've been studying where those savings will come from. I note in these supplementary estimates that there are only two real reductions that relate to the operating budget freeze: one is with the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner, a small amount; and the other is Veterans Affairs Canada, where there is a vote.
When you combine the 51 items—I think it's worth about $181 million in the earlier supplementary estimates (B)—we're still short a bit. We need about $117 million in operating budget freeze savings in order to meet that $300-million target. And we need to know which departments are going to be affected, and how severely those departments will be affected. Will it have an impact on Canadians and consumers?
The Parliamentary Budget Officer's report said that “the spokesperson for the President of the Treasury Board indicated that the residual $117 million in operating budget freeze reductions would be accounted for in lower compensation adjustments and therefore would not appear in the government’s estimates”.
That's of concern to me and I'm sure to my colleagues around this table. We have a fiduciary responsibility. We've been following through, trying to get information on the impact of $300 million in cuts this year. Perhaps you could talk to us about this.