Mr. MacGregor, this is a tremendously important issue. There was a great deal of debate, within this committee and elsewhere, in the spring. I don't know that a short answer will do it justice.
The starting point is about improving transparency so that parliamentarians understand how the estimates process supports the budget. In the minister's own parlance, we had it completely backwards before. We submitted the estimates. Then we followed up with a budget. Then we brought budget items, a piece at a time, over many years. In some cases, it was five or six years from a budget announcement until the time it showed up in the estimates.
The intention of vote 40 this year was to essentially serve as a report card. The government said in budget 2018 that they expect to spend $7 billion on a cash basis, so we put that in the estimates. We are reporting, every month, about how that money is being allocated and how it's being used. At the end of the year, we will see how the government has done in terms of allocating money to its priorities as announced in budget 2018.
I think that's a tremendous step forward in terms of transparency and just making the process understandable. Parliament approved the budget, and therefore I don't think it's illogical that Parliament would approve the appropriations to implement the budget. What we are doing through our reporting is providing a level of detail and a pace of detail that have simply never existed before. We're supporting that with additional online material, including on InfoBase.