Thank you, Mr. Chair.
As you noted, essentially the appropriation sets out an upper limit to spending and directs some general purposes to which the spending is meant to apply. Typically, I think the government does a fairly good job of planning to spend that money, but from time to time, as you noted, lapses occur.
My experience has been, certainly when I was in a department, that the explanations were rarely the same from year to year. Many different things can go into causing a lapse, and it's important to study the components of the lapse. You noted many different departments, and I'm sure there are many different explanations for each of those cases. I must confess that I'm not familiar with what the stories are in each of those instances. But I will say that we expect departments to try to plan and to do the very best they can to make good use of the moneys appropriated by Parliament.