Mr. Matthews, congratulations once again on your new role and all the fine work you've been doing over the years with the Treasury Board Secretariat.
You gave a very broad overview of spending within all of government, not just the Treasury Board Secretariat. As much as I'd like to plunge into some details, I just want to talk about the longer-term trend.
When we studied the estimates process a couple of years ago, we talked about its being effective for us to look at the longer-term trend rather than the quarter-by-quarter or even one-year results. At roughly the same time as the supplementary estimates (B) we have the departmental performance reports. I want to ask you some questions about the departmental performance reports, because we can look at the annual trend.
In the actual expenditures just within the Treasury Board Secretariat, we see some significant reductions in spending. In the categories of management frameworks, people management, expenditure management, and financial management, we see year-over-year decreases in each of the four categories.
Could you talk about some of the initiatives within the Treasury Board Secretariat to reduce those expenditures?
There's one item for which we see the costs increasing, but I'll ask you that question later.
Just in those four categories, why were the costs decreasing fairly significantly year over year?