Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Accrual accounting is super difficult. I was a financial analyst at my first job after graduating from Laurier, and this thing kept me up at nights. It was not fun. I wasn't an accounting major; I was a finance major. I can only imagine implementing it. That was a Fortune 500 company that was switching from cash to accrual. I can only imagine trying to implement it in the Government of Canada.
The benefit to accrual accounting is that it gives you an accurate snapshot of your fiscal picture. You've used the pension example. Say there's a scenario that a party was campaigning on a raise to public servants and then gets elected and realizes that it cannot meet those objectives because the previous government didn't do a good job of managing the fiscal situation, and instead it increases their pension benefits.
That won't affect that year's surplus deficit under cash-based accounting. Under accrual-based accounting, you're saying that that pension promise needs to be accounted for. How would you account for that promise accurately?