Those definitions primarily come from international accounting standards. In terms of the existing definitions, a point that we made in the report that we published in the summer is that, from our starting point, everyone around the world is familiar with them. The Government of Canada doesn't control those definitions, so they're impartial and independent. If you run a business or you're a small business person, you're familiar with those definitions as well. For us that means that those are the definitions we're going to focus on.
Certainly, I've been here for 17 years, and, from my perspective, parliamentarians get this sense of a bottom line. Are you borrowing more or less money? Do you have a deficit? Do you have a surplus? We haven't had a surplus in a while, so we haven't had to talk about that. Changing the definitions at this point to say, “Well, do you have a surplus in your operating budget versus your capital budget?” will definitely be a challenge, for nomenclature, in trying to explain things.
Also, something members of the committee obviously are aware of is that there aren't a lot of people on the Hill who have a detailed financial background. There are really smart people. Obviously, parliamentarians are smart, committed and willing to put in the time and the effort, otherwise they wouldn't be here. At the same time, they don't have time to go into excruciating detail around the international financial standards definition of what an operating budget is and then do the cross-comparison to something else. That, I guess, is why we're here. Ultimately, whenever the government ends up with a definition, and whatever definition they end up with, the Parliamentary Budget Office will be here to explain it in the best way we know how, to support parliamentarians.