Let me take a few of those questions back to front.
The money for the new CSE headquarters is covered in these estimates. With respect to the Nortel campus, that is not found in the supplementary estimates (B), nor is the reference to satellites found in these supplementary (B) estimates.
Working further backwards, on the issue of lapsing, Mr. Chair, we have a very good story to tell. This is an outstanding record, in my view, of managing a budget of this size, when one considers the responsibilities managed daily by the Department of National Defence, the size of the budget, and the size of the carry-over. This is the critical point, Mr. Christopherson, that you're referring to in regard to the Auditor General's comments. It was, in fact, as a result of that report you're referencing that the carry-over amount was elevated.
It used to be that the Department of National Defence had a 1% carry-over. It is now 2.5% as a direct result of that report. It dawned on everyone that, given the size of the budget National Defence managed, to expect to come within 1% of spending authority every year was simply unrealistic, when every other department of government had a 5% carry-over. It was described to me by one member of the defence team as the equivalent of trying to land a 747 on the back of an aircraft carrier--it's a very short distance for landing a budget of that size. As a result of those recommendations from the Auditor General, we now have a larger runway, if you will.
To move directly to your question, what has happened since 2004-05, with this new spending authority we have, is that DND has not, in fact, lapsed the amount of money that's referred to in a number of articles and in some of the partisan rhetoric we hear around here. In spite of the fact that we have this large direct program spending, it has the lowest--I repeat, the lowest--carry-forward provisions of any department. And we are still able to manage that budget. DND is expected to manage to far higher expectations and tighter tolerances than other departments. So this anomaly that occurred in the budget year 2010-11, after allowing for its 2.5% carry-over and the reprofiling of funds to meet liabilities associated with deferred capital projects....
I want to pause for a moment and talk about deferred capital projects. There are many instances in which circumstances well beyond the control of National Defence--that is, a procurement project that is not delivered on time by a private company--results in the Department of National Defence being unable to pay forward certain amounts of money for a product that was not delivered. A case in point is the maritime helicopter project. We had profiled roughly $250 million to pay for maritime helicopters, which were to be delivered this year. Well, due to circumstances beyond our control, a private company did not meet those contractual requirements, therefore disallowing our delivery of that money. We are unable to carry forward that large amount of money in our budget.
I'm going to turn to Kevin Lindsey to allow him to expand further on this particular lapsing issue, because I know this is of interest to the members present.
Mr. Lindsey.