Public Accounts committee  That's true, and thank you, Mr. Saxton, but I did want to give the allocation report as well to at least give you something, so that you had that.

Public Accounts committee  Yes, that's correct.

Public Accounts committee  I guess I wanted to take the most generous interpretation of it and see if we could get information on the votes in departments, but we don't have that information. I don't mean to disrespect the wishes of the committee in any way, but I saw the initial motion as being focused on vote 35.

Public Accounts committee  That's correct.

Public Accounts committee  That's correct.

Public Accounts committee  You got it exactly right, Mr. Christopherson. I think it's actually about 30 or so votes in different departments. I don't have the expenditure information on those 30 votes. I do have what was moved from vote 35 to those, but I do not have the information on the rate of spending on those appropriations.

Public Accounts committee  They would be in the departments.

Public Accounts committee  Well, what you could do is ask the chief financial officers to report on that in their departments, and you could do a manual roll-up on that.

Public Accounts committee  I could. There's actually a group at Treasury Board Secretariat that does some of that. It's not in my office. It's the expenditure management group. In preparation for the budget reports, they do have some of that through April, but to my knowledge, that's the most current information they have.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you very much, Ms. Faille. Yes, absolutely. Departments must report on the effectiveness of their resources from the budget. Effectiveness reports are found in departmental performance reports. For example, if we want an idea of the effectiveness of the infrastructure program, we need to know that one or two departments use the majority of the program's funds.

Public Accounts committee  We are thinking of adding up-to-date information to the public accounts that you will get in three to five months. So, then, there will be no more time lag.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you. I must say I'm not an expert on those particular programs, and--

Public Accounts committee  I would be pleased to do so.

Public Accounts committee  That exact question I can't answer, because the financial systems in the departments collect that information. Although we do have a Receiver General for Canada who collects summary information, the coding for those expenditures is in the departments, so it's the chief financial officers in the departments who would have that information.

Public Accounts committee  Actually, in most cases it won't, and I'll have to explain why. The reason is a bit technical. The coding in the system is like putting a flag on the expenditure to say that it is a budget expenditure. You don't normally put those flags in the government's big system for something that's going to last a year or two, because it's a significant machinery change.