Thank you for the question.
It's an excellent question. Forecasting is a practice that we and all Government of Canada departments take seriously. Every year we have a sense of the central battle rhythm of our operations. I spoke earlier about the core work of PCO not being fundamentally changed from last year over this year in terms of its essence to support the Prime Minister and the clerk and cabinet.
With respect to doing our best to adhere to forecasts, first we put together a plan for the year that also looks forward to their internal spending plans for the next couple of years. Marc and his team visit on a regular basis with all the folks who are in charge of what we call responsibility centres—the folks who manage the budgets within the department—to go over what they're planning to spend their money on: how many people are they going to hire, what's their planned staffing, will they have to travel to further the government's objectives, and will there be key gatherings of provincial, territorial, or international officials that need to be supported?
We put together a forecast based on that. We do that at the beginning of the year, and then we check in at a minimum on a quarterly basis. As the year progresses, that gets a bit more intense.