Government Operations committee  Thank you for the question. I'll make a couple of quick comments. There is all sorts of information out there on programs now, so there's nothing to prevent parliamentarians from reviewing departments by programs, and you could leave the vote structure the way it is, or you could change it.

Government Operations committee  It had caught our attention that many witnesses had mentioned the notion of changing the vote structure to programs and program activities. Slide 8 of our presentation has the number of programs that were laid out, and 593 program activities and over 2,000 programs struck me as a rather large number—too big to study.

Government Operations committee  If I may I will answer first, Chair, but Sally may have some additional comments. We reach out to departments largely through the network of chief financial officers and their teams. I meet with the chief financial officers frequently, and they give us suggestions. As I mentioned, the frequent theme is around reporting burden—why have you added these reports?

Government Operations committee  The budget's a very high-level policy document. It's not about what's in the estimates document itself. It's about what has to happen behind the scenes for an expenditure item to be included in an Appropriation Act, and it means a well-designed plan. Where you have ongoing programs that were there for a number of years, the numbers in the budget are absolutely lined up with the numbers in the estimates.

Government Operations committee  The report on plans and priorities was designed to support the study of the main estimates. So when you actually look at the main estimates, the theory behind the report on plans and priorities is that it's a document, by department, to help committees complete their studies of the estimates.

Government Operations committee  What I would suggest to you that parliamentarians look at, and it's all public already, but I think it's up to us to better group these documents together.... If I were studying a department's main estimates, I would certainly look at the main estimates for the previous year and look at what the change is.

Government Operations committee  There is information in the main estimates on programs, but you are absolutely correct. In the report on plans and priorities and the follow-up departmental performance report, there is more time given to program plans and achievements. If you wanted a good discussion about the future of certain programs or the past performance, they are fantastic documents to use for that discussion.

Government Operations committee  I do have an idea. Under the current system, if you thought there would be a new program that was going to be in the budget and you wanted that department working on the program design at the same time that the budget is being formulated, absolutely, you would be expanding that loop.

Government Operations committee  That allows additional sharing of information without compromising the secrecy. I'm not sure if you wanted to add anything.

Government Operations committee  Correct.

Government Operations committee  When the estimates documents are produced, as I said, they are based on Treasury Board approvals but it's departmental content. If our own minister was coming, we would help prepare him, but if a minister from a line department was coming we wouldn't do that.

Government Operations committee  We are going through all the data we produce right now to assess what can be made open.

Government Operations committee  Thank you for the question. You said estimates.

Government Operations committee  What goes into estimates is basically everything that has been through Treasury Board and approved and that is ready for spending. This comes in from departments and is then used to make up the appropriation bill. That process is very much done based on what Treasury Board has approved in terms of spending items.

Government Operations committee  When you're looking at estimates, the Appropriation Act is an “up to” amount. It sort of sets the ceiling. Sally referred earlier to whether there is a way we can better connect the dots. One of the ways mentioned was by publishing previous years' actuals to give a sense of what the spending has been in the past against the current year's forecast or the current year's RPPs.