My name is Michael Sunderland. I'm acting deputy director of government financial reporting for the Treasury.
I would not pretend to be an expert in the Canadian system in any way. However, one of the benefits we see in aligning the estimates, the budgets, and ultimately the financial accounts is that it has improved transparency. It is easier to track the Treasury's expenditure plans.
Ultimately, there are still challenges, and the challenges come from.... Under transparency, people require different levels of granularity of information and people have different needs. Sometimes we are asked for much more granular kinds of information in the presentation of the estimates and the financial accounts. At other times people are concerned that there is too much information and say that it's quite hard to see the wood for the trees.
Ultimately, most countries are trying to strike a balance that enables them to have firm control over their public expenditure while providing some rigorous transparency to their parliaments for the expenditure they've undertaken.