As to how Canada could improve its oversight, I'll share with you the following recommendations: to ensure that the executives' budget proposals are provided to legislators at least two months before the start of the budget year and that the budget proposals in the main estimates are better aligned; to ensure that a legislative committee examines in-year budget implementation and publishes a report presenting its recommendations; and finally, to ensure that the audit report is published six months or less after the end of the budget year, in order to allow legislators to scrutinize the prior year's outcome before voting on the new budget.
The one thing that they talked about around including Canadians, improving their participation, was to pilot ways for members of the public to provide input into the monitoring of the implementation of the national budget. That's one way the people could be involved.
I think right now what happens is that you have stakeholders from different organizations, groups and whatnot, come and make presentations. What citizens often don't have is.... You give the information but you don't know what happened to it afterwards. Why is one thing a priority and something else isn't? How does a government say one thing is happening and another is not?
I'd be willing to leave the two-pager with you as a reminder to look into it. I plan to look particularly into the citizen budget piece to see how something like that could happen here in Canada.
Thank you very much.