I've already mentioned timeliness, but, because it's so important, I will mention it again. The federal government has actually failed to deliver budgets for a couple of fiscal years during this decade, which is an unprecedented fail. It is a straightforward hole in accountability when it comes to parliamentarians and other Canadians being able to monitor what it's doing.
The fact that the federal government is now on a fall budget cycle looks as though it's going to be able to repair that. Again, I apologize for repeating it, but it's worth underlining. We do need to make sure that the public accounts come out on a more timely basis. We want them to continue to have clean audits, and we'd like them to come out in the fall, well ahead of the budget, because, if you have a budget ahead of the public accounts, then you're two years out of sync with what the current data are.
There's a real problem with old numbers. They're just not as exciting. It's harder for parliamentarians to motivate people to pay attention to them, so timeliness is a big deal. As Nick mentioned in his comments, it's a red flag if results are late. We'd like to see the federal government be timelier. Most of the provinces and territories are well ahead of it when it comes to publishing their public accounts.