There are a couple of things on this, David. I was joking a little bit with Mr. Blaney, but I don't want us to get into.... I've sat on committees that get too partisan and it's not a lot of fun.
On this, if you take a look at the “Fiscal Monitor” it's a picture in time of one month, one quarter, what have you, and it's like saying you check your bank account one day and you have $10,000 in it but you haven't paid your mortgage, you haven't paid your car payment. Or you think, I must have money in my account, I still have cheques left, kind of thing. It's not exactly a broader picture. It doesn't necessarily reflect the overall.
In terms of the frozen allotments in that question, I just want to give you some examples. These are funds that are approved by Parliament but the Treasury Board will restrict access to the monies for various reasons. I'll give you just a couple of examples.
One is, for instance, when there's a commitment to transfer dollars to another department or agency in exchange for a service. Another is the reprofiling to future years.
For instance, freezing allotments sometimes occurs with defence procurement where we set aside a certain amount of money with the expectation that money will be expended in the future. Again you can go to the Treasury Board website and see $5.1 billion laid out in terms of specific examples.
There's $2.8 billion of the frozen amounts that are funds that have been approved for reprofiling to future years. This includes $630 million in capital and operating funds for major defence projects like I mentioned; $675 million for claims settlements and other transfers supporting indigenous peoples.
I'll give you one example here that falls under Treasury Board, and that's $507 million for maternity and parental benefits and severance. That falls under “Treasury Board Central”. It's an important one because Treasury Board, by doing this centrally, takes that financial cost out of departments and agencies, and Treasury Board manages it. We do that because we believe there is a public good to not having departments and agencies making hiring decisions with limited budgets based on whether there's a possibility that somebody may need parental benefits or severance. There are some very important and progressive reasons why Treasury Board will manage some of these centrally.
We are managing government contingencies. This year, part of this for Treasury Board is $750 million of government contingencies that won't be allocated. There are carry-forwards from other years for operating capital budgets of $560 million. The rendering of this public “earlier in the budget” process, as the parliamentary budget officer has said, is a significant step in terms of transparency. It's an important step. It's just the beginning in terms of transparency and providing better information to parliamentarians and Canadians.