Government Operations committee  It was $349 million for 2009-10.

Government Operations committee  --so you end up with less than 5%. Indeed, I will just add that there are reinvestments as well, which have, for the first two rounds, counterbalanced the reallocations. There are no net savings, as such, from strategic reviews.

Government Operations committee  Mr. Dewar, it doesn't work that way for strategic reviews. The departments themselves propose, and are required to propose, reallocations that are up to 5% of their direct program spending base. We determine the base. In that sense--

Government Operations committee  Right.

Government Operations committee  Yes. For them to determine the 5%, it may be that those proposals are not fully accepted--

Government Operations committee  Within the format of strategic reviews, we do look at the relevance and performance of individual programs. We can, in fact, use this vehicle over time to do horizontal analyses of certain types of programming that are in different departments. It's a bit more complicated, but more and more, I think, we now have the tools in terms of performance indicators, evaluation, and our program activity architecture to start to do that work.

Government Operations committee  That's correct.

Government Operations committee  It's very much program-focused in departments, looking at the effectiveness of programs and their relevance and their performance.

Government Operations committee  Those kinds of questions deal with machinery issues, and they are very much the purview of the Prime Minister and the Privy Council Office: whether government is configured properly or whether there are better ways of moving programs from one place to another. They don't really figure into strategic reviews.

Government Operations committee  I'm not aware of any such mechanism within government. Here, I would also emphasize that with strategic reviews the focus has not been on administrative costs either, or on savings that could be obtained through cost-cutting across departments. It's very much a focus on programs, on whether they're working well, whether they're still relevant, whether they need to be better resourced, or whether there are excessive resources in certain programs.

Government Operations committee  You're quite correct that there has been an emphasis by the Auditor General and others on the need for better program evaluation and performance management information. And indeed, strategic reviews are intended to build on that kind of evidence base in coming to decisions as to where funding should be better deployed.

Government Operations committee  There have been, in the past, many different types of expenditure reviews, dating back, as you said, to the mid-nineties and even beyond, and they all had different characteristics and were required for different reasons. Sometimes they were indeed cuts exercises. In the last two rounds of strategic reviews, however, we've taken a different approach.

Government Operations committee  No, I wouldn't like to try to wrap up, Chair.

Government Operations committee  I can speak about the strategic reviews now or a little bit later, whichever you wish.

Government Operations committee  Thank you. I'd be happy to. I would like to thank the honourable members of the committee for the opportunity to speak with you about strategic reviews. Perhaps I could start briefly with the framework within which we're working. The expenditure management framework is a framework for developing and implementing the government's spending plans in support of its priorities.