Government Operations committee  They can do some research in terms of the documents that are out there. They're actually quite useful. They know where to look for main estimates and quarterly financials and RPPs. Researchers can be quite useful on that front, absolutely.

Government Operations committee  I'll let my colleague from Finance comment in a moment. The budgets could make changes to statutory programs, but if they are status quo.... I guess by leaving them status quo, the budget in fact has looked at them. But there is no committee that I'm aware of that studies statutory spending.

Government Operations committee  It's an interesting one, because when you look at the work of the committee in studying estimates, the key is to do the work to study the Appropriation Act, which is just for the voted items. That's absolutely paramount. As you said, though, the statutory spending does represent two-thirds of spending.

Government Operations committee  I would distinguish between the work of committees on strategic review and the deficit reduction action plan, because that was an internal government exercise to identify savings. That's different from a committee actually studying the spending. To my knowledge no committee is studying statutory spending at the moment.

Government Operations committee  Mr. Chair, in terms of my earlier comments with respect to a crisis or an unforeseen event, that's an important point because if the government wants to spend money on something that was not planned, it does need to come back to Parliament for approval, and that's a key control we have in the system.

Government Operations committee  Those are indeed the pro forma or future-oriented financial statements I spoke to. Departments are preparing those now, and have been for a couple of years. They're not finding them useful for their own purposes. They were already producing forecasts in terms of what they were going to spend.

Government Operations committee  Thank you, Chair. To actually make some of the suggested changes on that slide, we don't need the blessing of this committee. We try to make improvements. If we think we have a good idea.... We added horizontal items not so long ago. You'll see some improvements in the next supplementary estimates (A).

Government Operations committee  I was aware of that recommendation, and I thought there was a good discussion around the pros and cons of that because if you dedicate a committee to the estimates, you don't have maybe the specific knowledge of a certain department in the room, but you'd certainly get more airtime for your estimates, so there are pros and cons.

Government Operations committee  So that gets down to the—

Government Operations committee  So that would depend on.... If the money involved is from two different programs, it absolutely would have implications if you move to a program vote, which, as I mentioned, has its challenges in terms of how many programs there are. From my perspective, if you think about the G-8 and G-20, we have changed some processes internally to make sure we better describe in the estimates documents so that we don't bump into those again.

Government Operations committee  No. The green infrastructure one is a bit of a different story. When you actually check main estimates to main estimates, you'll see that there are reductions. When a department brings in its main estimates and we start the year fresh, you're not moving money from one fund to another.

Government Operations committee  The three to five years I was referring to are if the change was made to the actual vote structure. In my mind, there's a lot of information out there now on programs that would not prevent a committee from studying on a program basis, but I was actually referring to if Parliament decides to change the basis for the vote.

Government Operations committee  It depends. Supplementary estimates (B) is your most common. But some programs have taken a couple of years to design.

Government Operations committee  The answer depends on what's in the budget. If you were to think about a budget that had a brand new program, in that scenario it would not make it into the estimates. If you had items in the budget that topped up existing programs, such as a program that currently is $5 million a year and you were going to make it $7 million, that sort of thing absolutely would get in.

Government Operations committee  Well, again, estimates are “up to” amounts, so we don't use estimates in appropriation acts to communicate reductions. They would only come into play where a department was asking for new money and there had been a reduction put in place. Estimates are all about an “up to” amount.