Thank you for the question.
Circling back to a previous comment from the minister about the positioning of the estimates versus the budget in the fiscal year, as mentioned, the reality is that by the Standing Orders of the House of Commons we have to table the main estimates on or before March 1 every year. By convention, the last several budgets have been in February, March, and April of other years.
It is quite common, if your budget is the pre-eminent policy statement of the document, aspirational in nature, setting out what they want to do, that it will take some time from that budget to work with departments to stand up a program. It will take some time to develop the terms and conditions, work with their partners, be it provinces, NGOs, international stakeholders, so that program will stand up to the scrutiny of the President and his Treasury Board colleagues.
At that point, when we have the Treasury Board approval, we bring the item forward in supplementary estimates for parliamentary approval. Depending on when that happens in the year, there can be as little as just a few weeks left in the fiscal year for a department to spend the money. I'll use supplementary estimates (C) as an example, which were just tabled on February 19.
We don't anticipate parliamentary approval of those amounts, the $1.8 billion in voted programming, until something like the third week in March. Therefore, there are instances where departments simply run out of runway, time and space, to be able to implement the initiative. Then there are some options available to them to carry forward the funds.
There is a process, which I'd be glad to speak to in the second hour to explain the carry forward process, or to have that funding reprofiled by the Department of Finance. That is a dual role. We will work with the department to see if there's a valid reason why they couldn't stand the program up. If the Department of Finance agrees, they will reprofile the money in their fiscal framework, and that will be subsequently presented to Parliament in future supplementary estimates for their approval at that point.
It's not automatic. It requires a dual role by TBS and by Finance, and it is presented to Parliament. In fact, in the main estimates we have a couple of examples. Aboriginal Affairs is—