I'm sorry, I didn't mean to say that Canada is the only holdout, but clearly it's in the minority. Most countries overwhelmingly have moved toward a consolidated budget.
I don't know enough about Canada to explain why it has persisted with the old system. It might simply be inertia.
Several things happened to make the consolidation of a budget logical. I mentioned the rise in prominence of fiscal policy, which requires that you look at the aggregates in the budget rather than the parts of the budget.
Another thing, which I did not mention earlier, is the decline in the investment component. To be a developed country is to be a country where investment expenditure recedes as a portion of the total budget. That's another factor.
Still another factor is what I mentioned earlier, the substitutability between operating and capital expenditure.
Finally, there's the growth of government debt financing of the budget. If government is financing both operating and capital expenditure, then the logic of separating the two diminishes.
Having said all this, I'd like to raise the following cautions.
One, you still need information in the budget on capital investment.
Two, you still may want to maintain a golden rule with respect to government indebtedness, to limit it.
Three, to the extent that you develop an accrual budget system or accrual accounting system, as a number of the Commonwealth countries—Britain, Australia, and New Zealand—have done, then what you need is a capacity to estimate the value of the capital stock of a country, which means that you need depreciation accounts as well. That's a fairly complex matter that you may want to consider.
The final point I want to make is that some have argued that with the consolidation of the budget, advanced countries, including Canada, are underinvesting in infrastructure. Since it recedes in importance, it doesn't have its separate budget, it's not separately protected, and consequently, in the competition for funds, capital investment, which can be very costly, can be deferred in order to pay the current expenditure.
So that's something you should be mindful of.