Currently most departments are on an annual appropriation that ends at fiscal year-end, March 31st, but within that annual appropriation there is a construct of a permitted carry-forward amount. In the operating budget space, departments can carry forward up to 5% of their main estimates amount. This was introduced back in the early 1990s. It was a recommendation from the Auditor General and from a public service task force at the time to deal with the notion of year-end spending, which used to be known as “March madness”.
It's a sensible construct to incentivize departments to use the money in a future year for the program and service rather than spending it on something unplanned. That regime has worked, I think, very well over the past 25 years. It's been reviewed by the Auditor General and parliamentary committees. In fact, it worked so well that after the first two years, it was increased from a 2% carry-forward to a 5% carry-forward. It's stayed at that level for operating votes ever since.
In 2011 we introduced the concept of a capital budget carry-forward with the exact same principles: rather than having money lapse or spent at year-end on something that wasn't a priority for the department, they could carry forward their capital budget into the future year for approved programs and services—