I have a couple of general observations to start with. First of all, when you appropriate funds, that represents an upper ceiling. So there's never really an expectation that it will be completely used. Departments are certainly not obligated to spend their entire appropriations, and for certain appropriations, there are a number that are essentially there to cover contingencies. So if the occasion does not arise to access those contingent funds, they will lapse. There's always a certain level of lapse that is to be expected.
In the 2012-13 year, the situation arose where the main estimates had been tabled, and then there were some reductions announced in the 2012 budget after the estimates had been tabled. What Treasury Board did was to so-call freeze certain of those simply to reflect the update, if you will. That's not the only reason you would freeze allotments, but it was one reason that happened to be present in the year in question. There could be other reasons that frozen allotments are used. In this case that sort of category covered about 40% of the lapse.
Also, departments have the ability to carry forward a part of their appropriations. I certainly remember that I did this when I was a chief financial officer. We plan to carry forward some of the current year's funds into the next year because we have a greater need, say, in a subsequent year than the current year. That carry-forward activity represented about 16%.