Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I want to go back to the line of discussion regarding lapsed funds, and what the PBO is suggesting is sort of a systemic or patterned process of lapsing funds. You mentioned that there are some things that are one-off, that are incidental and occasional, but there also seems to be some evidence that the practice is occurring in mature statutory programs as well, such as the guaranteed income supplement in OAS.
I've noticed lately that the estimates have predictably predicted a certain amount of expenditure for old age security and GIS. That's a pretty mature program in the sense that it's not very difficult, or it should't be very difficult, to anticipate uptake based on simple demographic trends. A couple of years ago we had basically lapsed about 5% of the GIS and probably 4% for the OAS. Historically, I've looked at the numbers and we've actually budgeted more over the last 10 years and required funds to be lapsed over seven of those 10 years,
The money may not be a whole lot of money when you think of it as 4% or 5%, but these are not small-ticket items, this is $27 billion a year for old age security and about $8 billion or $9 billion for GIS. Has the Treasury Board looked at that which I am now preaching to you and suggested that it's a problem? Or do you not identify that as a problem?