Government Operations committee  Yes, I'm aware of the initiative. When I look at the estimates documentation—and I would make the same comment about the actuals in public accounts—the most frequent complaint we hear is that you can't manipulate the data. You can't bring data together, pop it into a spreadsheet, and do some analysis on it.

Government Operations committee  The reporting burden that I mentioned was.... There are significant amounts of documentation in the RPPs and DPRs, as well as online, that support those documents. If members are not finding them useful in terms of helping out—

Government Operations committee  Thanks. That's an interesting question. The quasi-stats present a challenge and we can probably do a better job of describing programs. Because from a parliamentarian's perspective, there's statutory, which means no vote necessary, and there's voted. A quasi-stat is a voted where there's little discretion involved.

Government Operations committee  That's the biggest one I would point to. The quarterly financials are a relatively new invention as well, but they seem to be getting some attention. People seem to be using them. I'm going to turn to Sally and see if there's anything that jumps out at her.

Government Operations committee  We have, Chair, data by program. Departments certainly plan by program. I'm thinking more along the lines of how you actually control spending, and I'm talking here about financial systems and controls. The current controls are built around capital, operating, and Gs and Cs. So you're actually looking at changing systems to make sure that the controls are put in place, and that's the key challenge there.

Government Operations committee  It depends, Chair, upon the nature of the items. If you have a new program in a budget, because of budget secrecy and other things, you may not see work started on a new program design in earnest until the budget is actually tabled. We do have examples of cases where it's two and three years after a budget before money is actually ready to be spent.

Government Operations committee  Part of it is that some of the other countries have cash in both documents. And not every country has a Treasury Board, which actually requires a rather detailed expenditure plan before you can actually go through the estimates. You have to understand the control that Parliament is exercising over the spending.

Government Operations committee  Well, if you think about the process we go through in preparing the mains, it's a long process. I acknowledge that. So I'm conservative because I'd be the one stuck with the responsibility for implementing this, but three to five years is not unreasonable, no.

Government Operations committee  You need to understand that the information is largely out there now, but it's provided for information purposes. So we would actually be asking departments to change their control structures and their financial systems to effectively respect the new set of rules. That's not something you would do overnight.

Government Operations committee  They may have the political oversight, but from a controls perspective, blowing your vote is a significant event and it's not one anyone takes lightly. So you do want to make sure the control structure is actually built into departments to respect whatever it is that Parliament is controlling on.

Government Operations committee  If you're speaking about it from an estimates perspective—

Government Operations committee  —there's no need to include statutory information in the estimates documentation. The reason for doing so is that statutory spending is roughly two-thirds of the government's total spending, give or take, in a given year. Some people like to see that perspective. The other perspective, of course, is that it just adds a bunch of material to the document that is not really relevant for the study.

Government Operations committee  I think the comments made were around the process for notifying employees, which is governed by our collective agreements with employees. The process that was articulated in the budget was that there would be discussion, with the unions notified first, then employees, and then you would actually see some—

Government Operations committee  I think the other comment made was around the link between RPPs—reports on plans and priorities—and main estimates. RPPs by convention support the main estimates, and as this committee knows, the main estimates do not reflect decisions from the budget. That's also the other consideration on—

Government Operations committee  I'm not sure on the rule front. The other thing I would point out, though, is that since the 2005 budget, the additional reporting is now done by departments. The biggest addition is around the quarterly financial reports, which didn't exist back then. My own suggestion is that if departments can take advantage of existing reporting mechanisms once they've gone through the process of notifying unions, employees, etc., to share information....