Thank you, Bill.
It's my duty to go over some of the problems with the federal public accounts.
One problem is timeliness. It is now late October. The 2025-26 fiscal year ended almost seven months ago. Other senior governments have produced their public accounts—some as early as three months after their fiscal year ended. The government is set to present a budget next week. We should have the results for 2025-26 by now.
In the private sector, late financial results are a red flag. Companies listed on Canada's main stock exchanges have to produce their results no more than three months after their year ends. Our securities regulators meet that same timeline.
We should get results while they are fresh and parliamentarians are better positioned to react to any problems they reveal. Faster publication will prompt faster data gathering, which will help the budget planning process and help other organizations, including other senior governments, make their own fiscal plans. We think December 31 is too late a deadline for the production of federal public accounts and would encourage the government to produce them much sooner, ideally by June 30 and no later than September 30.
With respect to the presentation of information in federal public accounts, we do have some criticisms. We think the main presentations should match other presentations that show all pension expenses as part of compensation, rather than having an obscure amortization entry below the highlighted deficit line. We would encourage placement of the main table closer to the front page.
More substantively, we are concerned that changes in the definitive measure of the federal government's capacity to deliver services—its accumulated deficit—which is revealed in the public accounts, are too different from the reported deficit figure and from the deficit prefigured in the annual budget.
These issues are becoming more consequential. Governments face fiscal pressures following the pandemic, trade uncertainty, rising costs associated with an aging population and revenues constrained by slower economic growth. Fiscal concerns are a key reason why government bond yields have been rising recently and adding to these pressures. In this environment, understanding governments' true financial position and the sustainability of their spending commitments is increasingly important.
We would be glad to take your questions on those issues and any other issues related to the public accounts and federal government financial documents that can help you in your work.
Thank you.