Public Accounts committee  Again, I think it's very difficult to get that information during the fiscal year. If a department exceeds its vote at the end of the year, we would know that, but we are not in a position to be able to, of those virtually thousands of votes, determine on a given daily or weekly basis whether a department is in fact exceeding its spending.

Public Accounts committee  As we come to the end of a fiscal year, the department will know whether in fact it exceeded its overall budget, and it will also be able to track, and should be able to track during the year, where it is.

Public Accounts committee  They're very much required as departments, as is the senior executive, including the deputy who's the accounting officer of the department, to ensure that they are basically within their vote. That is the responsibility of each department. It's been very rarely the case, in my experience, that any one department or any one agency has in fact exceeded its vote during the year.

Public Accounts committee  I think, first and foremost, the trend line is a reflection of the increase in spending by the government each year. There has been a significant increase in spending year over year that was announced as part of each budget each year, and as a result of these being in the budget, it's been very difficult for us to put the budget provisions into the mains, because we need to finalize mains often much before the period of time when the budget comes down.

Public Accounts committee  Yes, it's moving from deficit to surplus. David, do you want to comment on that?

Public Accounts committee  David, would you comment?

Public Accounts committee  At this point, no. We are in agreement with the Auditor General in terms of her recommendations in her report. I can't be more categorical than that. We think it's an excellent report and we're quite comfortable with the recommendations she's put on the table.

Public Accounts committee  We are putting in a plan. We are recommending a plan to the president, who will bring this forward to cabinet, basically following through on the AG's report and how we can address the overall concerns she's raised and how we can respond to the recommendations.

Public Accounts committee  I think the honourable member will be the best judge of the overall response to the AG's report when the government comes out with its plan.

Public Accounts committee  Again, as you know, some of the recommendations the Auditor General has proposed are at a fairly general level. Sometimes the devil is in the details. You're going to have to be the judge of how we've responded to the somewhat higher-level set of recommendations and what we actually have to implement.

Public Accounts committee  No, if you have looked over the last number of years, any department that decides to spend in advance of receiving the appropriate authority through Parliament does so very much at their own risk, because Parliament can decide at any point in time not to approve that particular spending.

Public Accounts committee  I won't comment on where we have been, except to say that if you look back over the past decade, we came in with the expenditure management system back in the early 1990s, after a period of time when the existing A-base had been reviewed on an ongoing basis each and every year. Then we had this exercise called program review, which was a thorough assessment of the A-base of the departments.

Public Accounts committee  Yes.

Public Accounts committee  If you look at the process, that's in fact what the government does. We submit the mains, as you know, every year to seek parliamentary approval. For those items that cannot be put into the mains—and that happens for a whole number of reasons—supplementary estimates are tabled, either in the fall or in the supplementary (B)s in the spring, in order to seek approval from Parliament to spend each year.

Public Accounts committee  If I could respond to the question, it's a timeframe to undertake evaluations within the system. We think we should be able to be in a position to evaluate every direct program's spending over a five-year period. That would probably mean roughly a doubling of the number of evaluators to undertake that process, which would be around 200 additional evaluators.