Mr. Speaker, as is usually said, I thank the hon. member for his question.
The Auditor General looked at this matter a number of years ago and found that there were some poor cash management practices. He was not saying that managers were wasteful in their spending at year end but that because the moneys were lapsing at year end, the end of March, if they did not spend them, they had a tendency to spend them perhaps prematurely, make purchases prematurely or spend money too quickly when it really was not due on the invoice.
To help prevent that, Treasury Board in the last fiscal year did an experiment that involved carrying forward some 2 per cent of departmental budgets into the following year so there would not be this year end frenzy as the member pointed out. That only involved a few departments.
This year we expanded it to all departments and have allowed them to carry over 5 per cent, which I think will help end that year end frenzy.