Government Operations committee  Yes. If you want, we can pass all this information on to the relevant departments and they can follow up and ensure the information is provided to you.

Government Operations committee  I don't know what the specific line item is, whether that is to ours or Public Works. Oh, it's not to ours, so that is Public Works. I don't have the details on what the requirement is for Public Works and Government Services Canada for that.

Government Operations committee  I believe the Privy Council Office will be here at 4:30. They have overall responsibility for that, so perhaps, Madam Chair, the honourable member may want to raise that question with our PCO colleagues.

Government Operations committee  Again, I believe the Privy Council Office would have that information.

Government Operations committee  Again, I apologize, but that would not be part of our responsibilities. I believe the Ministry of Transport would have that information.

Government Operations committee  Thank you. Merci, Madam. My apologies for being late. I'm chair of the United Way/Centraide Ottawa this year, and I was at an event where 250 kids from grades one to eight managed to collect $23,000 in their campaign, so I had to be there. I thought I would be easily back, but those programs go on forever, as many of you know.

Government Operations committee  That's what I thought on my way, that you've been in many of those schools yourselves. Thank you for your invitation to appear before your committee on the Treasury Board portfolio partners supplementary estimates (A). I am pleased to have with me today Rick Burton and Ginette Sylvestre.

Public Accounts committee  I'll let my colleague take that question.

Public Accounts committee  I would just point out to members that I think there are a lot of advantages in moving to an accrual system. We just talked about capacity within this community. We talked about the need to improve our overall financial management policies to ensure that we can have departmentally audited statements, to ensure that we have the right financial officers in place to move to a much more rigorous system of accounts to implement accrual accounting.

Public Accounts committee  I would just echo the Auditor General's comments and thank you for your interest in this, because we do think it is a very important initiative. We don't say this too often, but we do very much thank the Auditor General for her report and her assessment of recommendations, because from our perspective, it has been very helpful for us in framing our overall advice to the government.

Public Accounts committee  Is it dependent? I think it would make our lives a lot easier if the system was fully operational. Clearly we are going to need a new system for purposes of putting the estimates together. The legacy systems, as David indicated on Monday, are very much out of date. They simply are getting to a point where they won't function well in the years ahead.

Public Accounts committee  Am I satisfied? I'd say we're moving in the right direction. This is an area we have not invested in to the extent we've needed to over the last number of years. If all of you go back in time to the nineties, as part of the deficit reduction exercise the area where we cut the most in departments was essentially in our corporate overhead—corporate finance, administration, HR.

Public Accounts committee  I guess there are a couple of points. One is that there was more detail provided in the economic and fiscal update last fall. Then in the response to the AG's report the minister indicated again, at the time, how he planned to proceed. The reason I can't be precise—I'd like to be more precise—is that at the end of the day this will be a cabinet decision on the new system.

Public Accounts committee  We're ready to roll out a detailed plan that is subject to overall approval by the government.

Public Accounts committee  I would never want to say that. They may feel our advice is not solid advice. We are providing advice as to how we think the system should be put in place. They may find in their deliberations that it doesn't work. I hope that's not the case. I think we've worked hard in putting a set of proposals together for the cabinet to consider, but at the end of the day that will be subject to their overall consideration and approval.