Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I think perhaps the best approach is to take it recommendation by recommendation, because it's hard to generalize what actions we will take. I will quickly run through the recommendations and the government response. I will turn to my colleagues from the Department of Finance for comments on a few of them.
The first recommendation related to the long-standing question of whether to adopt accrual appropriations. The recommendation from the committee was that the government complete its study and get back to the committee by March 31. We indicated in the response that the government would do just that. There will be a response back to the committee by March 31 on what the government feels is the most appropriate model for appropriations accrual or cash-based. That commitment hasn't changed.
The second recommendation is the most challenging one, I think. It's on the vote structure in terms of how information is presented to Parliament. The question is how to best present the vote information to Parliament in appropriation acts. The fundamental question is whether to have the current structure of capital operating grants and contributions or a program- and activity-based model.
What the government has committed to do on that front, because this would be a significant effort to undertake and we wanted to ensure that members really had a sense of what they were getting, is to actually pursue a mock-up of what a vote structure would look like on that front and present it to committee. It would be unfortunate to undertake significant work and significant investment, only to find out at the end of the day that it's not what parliamentarians had in mind, so there is a commitment to come back with mock-ups. We will do that fairly shortly and have that discussion.