Nick, since you're muted I'll jump in and say there are a couple of things that might be relevant here.
One of them is the new timing of the budget. If we are on a fall budget cycle, which we commend, I think it's a very good thing to have a budget presented well in advance of the beginning of the fiscal year, which the federal government used to do regularly but has not done regularly. The fact that the budget is now coming in the fall means that you really need the public accounts out before the budget. It's a very tight timeline, and that seems to us to be a problem if the public accounts continue to come as late as they have lately.
The other thing I'll mention quickly, because I'm not sure how central this was to the question, is that we would certainly like to see the estimates presented. Maybe it's hard to do simultaneously with the budget now that it's on a fall cycle, but it would be very good if the estimates themselves were easier to reconcile with the budget and if the process by which they are approved was also a bit more transparent to legislators and the public. That would help parliamentarians keep track of what's going on with the spending side.
