Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I know you are doing your best to respond to the questions that I and my colleague have been asking about the specifics of dollars saved by the cuts to the civil service. I mean, it is clearly the mandate of the Treasury Board—it's right in the statute—to deal with estimates, expenditures, reviews of annual long-term expenditures, and human resources management, and the decision has been made of a certain percentage across the board in cuts. The one thing the Treasury Board appears to have voluntarily decided is that they have delegated away their mandate to track, overall, the dollar figures with the cuts. Given that we don't seem to be getting....
I will ask the question once more. The minister has stated publicly that he has already achieved a little bit more than half of his target in the cuts toward the deficit. Therefore, one presumes he knows the dollar figure that all those cuts represent. I guess the logical question for us....
It's our duty. It's why our committee was established—to monitor spending and to review the estimates in detail. Given the timeline for the review of estimates and the tabling back in the House, we don't have the luxury of bringing in every department and agency to ask them individually about where they have made the cuts and what the dollar figure is.
I am going to ask once more: can you at least give us the detailed breakdown where in fact, clearly, if the minister says those cuts have been made, the decision must have been made? Those employees must have opted for one, two, or three, and therefore you should know what those dollar figures are. Can you provide those to us? At least for the employees, presumably if half the cuts have been made, they have opted.