I have a couple of comments. The first is that the model that has been put forward is a model for discussion. The government has gone out, and we have dealt with departments and we have come back with an estimate for what it might cost. There's no commitment yet to actually do it; this is a discussion model.
One of the things the President of the Treasury Board asked officials to do was to work with departments to see whether that cost could be lowered. What is driving a substantial piece of the cost is systems cost. You may be aware, Mr. Chair, that most departments operate their own financial system. So we're not dealing with changing one financial system; we're dealing with changing a hundred financial systems.
There's been a lot of discussion and a lot of work done through the Office of the Comptroller General on standardizing financial systems. If you got departments all on one, or on two or three systems, the cost to change their systems would go down drastically. That's one thing we're playing with.
The other bit is that this is parliamentary control we're talking about. It's important for parliamentarians, but it's also important for departments. We need to give them time to make sure they understand the rules and put the right processes and controls in place. The existing control structure works very well, and we want to give departments time to think this through and make sure they get the right control structure.