Perhaps it would be interesting to get Scott Brison to appear in front of the committee to talk about why his ambition to make that happen did not come to fruition.
I frankly don't understand why it was so difficult as to be effectively impossible. I've already said that many governments in Canada do it. In the Atlantic region, it's typical practice to release the estimates simultaneously with the budget.
Of course, at some point, you're going to have to reconcile them. The phrase “busywork” for bureaucrats was mentioned earlier. At some point, you're going to have to do the reconciliation, because you have to have everything consistent with the public accounts. I don't see why it's harder at the time than it is after the fact.
I've frankly never understood the reasons why the federal government could not do that, because, as I've said already, we have provinces that do it. There are governments elsewhere in the world with parliamentary systems similar to ours that do it. I think it's a practical possibility, and it's partly just a matter of MPs saying, “Give us numbers that are easier to understand, because it makes it easier for us to do our job.”