Mr. Chair, if I could comment briefly, one of the things we are very strict about under the current expenditure management system is that if cabinet approves an ongoing mandate, there shall be an ongoing source of funds. If cabinet approves spending for three years or five years, then there needs to be a three-year or five-year source of funds.
Given that spending started to grow once the budget was balanced around 1997-98, over the last number of years we have seen a number of programs with three or five year funding come up to what we refer to as “sunsetting”. There have been times when programs sunset. There have been times when programs were merged together, changed somewhat, and in need of a new spending approval. There have been times when governments have not been prepared, in the timeline required to get something into main estimates, to take the decision to commit more money, and sometimes have extended a program only for a year rather than taking a multi-year decision. If those decisions happen after about November, or December at the very latest, typically we're not able to get that into the main estimates.
It is a very case-specific thing. But the one thing we can say for sure is that if there's an ongoing cabinet mandate, there is ongoing cabinet funding.