The main thing I can tell you, and I don't want to be in the position of creating myths about Treasury Board capacity, as it will make them very unhappy people, but I do know there is a single program activity architecture and it is a hierarchical structuring of programs. Then beneath them there are activities, sub-activities, and so on, and down at the very bottom, I believe, there is nominal cost information. They roll up the cost information to get the estimates and the cost of programs.
So, in theory, a great deal of what could be an online resource that could be available to parliamentarians exists over there. I have heard officials express some concerns about the cost of putting it online, for example. It could be that if you think about it in a very narrow framework focused on the formal estimates process, that might be a fair point to make. But if you think of it as an information resource supporting Parliament working on programs and their effectiveness both inside and outside the formal estimates process, then any costs involved become correspondingly more understandable.
In terms of the breakdown of information by writing, from time to time members do ask for that information about specific programs in written questions and by other means, and then the PCO goes into a panic and has to coordinate across all the departments pulling that information together. So the capacity to provide the information is there. We just do it now on an ad hoc basis.
I would have thought that if you have this kind of an online database, it ought not to be an insuperable problem to have that information built into it. Perhaps it would cost some money to do that, but on the other hand, the offsetting savings would be that you don't have these panic episodes when specific questions are asked.