Thanks very much.
In a way, we wish we'd had you here before some of the department officials, because we have learned there is no baseline being done about the actual cost implications--in other words, not collecting even government-wide data about what a fixed cost that can't be changed over the next few years is or isn't, nor is there any anticipation of service level impacts, which you have identified in your remarks. That surely has to be the bottom line.
We've had governments in the past—I was in the opposition of one in Ontario—that said you can get more for less, and we got Walkerton. One of the implications is caution and knowledge ahead of time of where cuts are taking place.
This is what I am looking for here. On the money that is being cut, the Treasury Board Secretariat talked about $300 million, and within the deputies...but that was just on the salary side. It didn't have a quantification of what would have to be cut on the other side or where we would get it from.
Are you able to give us any outlook about what those choices might look like, what kinds of pots departments will be able to get to, or do you need our help, from this committee broadly, to be able to get some of that information?
My concern is that we really need to know about this as we step into it, not after the fact. I mean, that's what the Auditor General can help us with.
I also wonder if you have any comment on the fact that operational spending was going at a fairly good clip—I understand the Conference Board number was around 6.1% per year—and the implications of putting the brakes on in such a sudden way. Again, what protections could there be to make sure the public isn't hurt, that important public services don't become part of some very diffuse thing?
The impression I got from the last hour is that this is being handed off to deputies. No one is checking. There are no benchmarks. Whatever is going to happen is going to happen. All we know is that they are not going to get any more money and they'll have to manage within that. We know something about the compounded effect of that, of course, but we don't know entirely because we don't know the cost pressures of previous contractual arrangements and anticipation of other costs.
What can you tell us about the scope of the challenge that this policy represents even at this point? What do you need to be able to take us further in the anticipation of some of the choices that deputy ministers are going to be forced to make? And part of that is how we have protections for very important public services from a very broad directive like this.