I'd be happy to answer that question, Mr. Chair.
In the context of how we manage spending authorities for our estimates, documents for supplementary estimates [Technical difficulty—Editor] primarily in the realm of appropriation-dependent organizations.
I'll give you an example. The Department of National Defence has their vote 1 in operating and they draw funds with the authority of Parliament from the consolidated revenue fund. That's within our scope, okay, but if it's a situation where a department has statutory authority to draw funds and to make transfers, either from the Income Tax Act or the EI Act, and to draw from the EI operating account and so forth—something that is beyond the scope of an appropriation-dependent department—those programs are effectively out of scope in terms of what we focus on in the estimates. Our intent has always been to be able to collect the information that is best within our swim lanes. That is the bulk of what we would call the “direct support measures” under the economic response plan for COVID-19.
When we put out our report, we were able to follow the same measures that the [Technical difficulty—Editor] and are the same measures that are in the estimates. People can actually take a measure and compare it with the spending authorities that a department has received in order to spend, and they can compare it with what was approved and set out in the fiscal plan in the fall economic statement. When I talk about financial transparency, literacy, comprehension and utility, it's really ensuring that parliamentarians are able to have that mapped back. That's what we can control.
[Technical difficulty—Editor ] amount of engagement, and these are incremental authorities that have been provided over the years. In addition to that, the effort to provide a sense, a line of sight as to [Technical difficulty—Editor] spending that had been redirected to be able to address COVID-19, is something that is separate and distinct. We're still trying to collect that information on a monthly basis. Again, we would be happy to provide the disaggregated data for both the measures but also that collective effort. We would be able to provide this to this committee.