That's a really good question. I remember going back to my days as a legislator in Manitoba, a very long time ago, 1988 to 1992, when I was in opposition. I always thought it made total sense to every year at budget time pose the question, is a program working? If it's not working, how can we make it work? And it we can't, then we should stop funding it. That's the prism through which I look at all public expenditures.
We must be able to convince the people who brought us here, and the people who fund these programs, that they are being run effectively. My several months' experience as minister tells me that our senior public servants believe that to be a value and an important one of prudent budgeting as well. The way you go about it is you assess the impact, the effectiveness, and whether or not it's a justified renewal.
In the case we've been talking about over the last 10 minutes or so, some funds have been sunset, so the department looked at the best way to renew them, learning from the experiences over the last five years, so new dollars could be spent more effectively and more efficiently, in part on the strength of what we've learned from what happened the five years previously.
So I'm with you. There really ought to be a way of examining, rationally, why we're spending any dollars that taxpayers—