Government Operations committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think the PBO's comment was related to the government as a whole and it was wondering if Treasury Board was approving too much in terms of planned spending. I will come back to this point a few times, I think. The amounts that departments have authority to spend is a maximum.

Government Operations committee  On the votes, specifically, I'll turn things over to my colleague Ms. Santiago.

Government Operations committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. We would be pleased to answer your questions. But first, I just want to give you a little reminder. We changed the estimates format a few years ago to list organizations in alphabetical order. What that means is that the order in English and French is different.

Government Operations committee  For clarity, there was no amount that was exceeded. The point is that if we were to give each department their 5%, there was not enough in the vote that was approved as part of main estimates. We are increasing it to allow us to give the 5%.

Government Operations committee  The amount we're transferring is in the neighbourhood of $170 million, but I could maybe speak to the root of the issue, which is the unspent amounts if you look on a government-wide basis in terms of what was not spent in the year 2012-13. We're only dealing on the voted amounts here, not the statutory, and it's in the neighbourhood of just over $10 billion in authority that was available that was not spent.

Government Operations committee  Thank you. As mentioned, there is $955 million for severance, which we have already covered, and we have already spoken about what the additional requirements for the operating budget carry forward are, but I will highlight the next item on the list. This is a transfer between the capital budget carry forward and the operating budget carry forward, which is a bit of an unusual item.

Government Operations committee  Mr. Chair, thank you for inviting us to appear before the committee this afternoon to assist you in your study of supplementary estimates (B) for 2013-14. I will spend 25 minutes going over the highlights across government, and then I will turn things over to Ms. Walker, who will discuss the Treasury Board Secretariat as a department.

Government Operations committee  Thank you for the question. It is quite complicated. Perhaps I will begin by discussing initiatives involving several departments. With respect to its own expenditures, each department must receive its proper funding allocation. So yes, it's horizontal, but there are a few basic rules around estimates that come into play.

Government Operations committee  The program information in the RPPs that I was speaking about is historical for three years and then going forward three years. Derek, do you want to run through that on the database, just to show it?

Government Operations committee  There is estimated spending on programs presented now. It's in RPPs. It's on the website. So it does exist, but again it's for information purposes in studying the estimates.

Government Operations committee  It is certainly true that some categories of expenses are quite difficult to forecast. Employment insurance is a great example; that varies with the economy. What you will see is the budget will use both economic forecast and historic information to make its best projection three years out, and in some cases longer.

Government Operations committee  The implementation costs have been minimal, and I will turn to my colleague in a moment to explain what software tools we used and what the cost was. Where we can't quantify anything is on the access to information requests, which are going up—that's just life in government. We're unable to say that the creation of this database has resulted in a reduction in access to information costs.

Government Operations committee  There are two things. Yes, it will help track it, but in addition to some other tools. In terms of the parliamentary control, I do want to emphasize that it is at the vote level. The question is quite accurate in terms of money being moved from a vote in one department to another one, but that does go through Parliament.

Government Operations committee  When supplementary estimates are presented, there is a list of vote transfers, increases to votes. You'll see that it could be new money that's being voted or it could be money that's coming to a department from another department. You will see that in the supplementary estimates: the vote for one department is increasing, and you'll see a corresponding decrease from another department.

Government Operations committee  Thank you. In order to change the financial system, internal control would have to be re-established. That would prevent a government from overspending its allocation. So if you think right now the controls are based on, as I mentioned earlier, capital, operating, and grants and contributions, and if a department puts a transaction into its financial system that would cause it to exceed those amounts, the system would either prevent it or set a warning to stop that from happening.