Public Accounts committee  I believe this is a good survey of what other countries are doing. I think doing it every year for the federal government is something fairly impressive. The other commitment we made, at the suggestion of the Auditor General's office, to brief the Minister of Finance at the end of a cycle on the budget, is also something I'm not aware other countries are doing.

Public Accounts committee  Yes. The report is based on Statistics Canada's projection of population taking into account the impact this will have on the economic and fiscal situation of the country. I guess this is standard in that kind of analysis, and we are within the standard.

Public Accounts committee  As the report of the Auditor General mentioned, the one we tend to use most to do the overall analysis is the partial equilibrium accounting model, because it basically takes all the measurements and puts them into a framework that spits out what the impact is. Measure by measure it's quite different.

Public Accounts committee  I would repeat that we made that information available in October. We published a report which you don't seem either to be aware of or to want to recognize. A report was published in October 2012 and we committed at the same time in the AG report to publish one in 2013. That is one every year.

Public Accounts committee  No, I'm expressing—

Public Accounts committee  At the end of the day, those are reports that are endorsed by the government, so it's a decision that is taken by the government to decide to publish or not.

Public Accounts committee  Do you mean in every year?

Public Accounts committee  I couldn't answer that. I would have to go back. I think they were done on a regular basis. As I told you, through the crisis, we turned our attention to some other more urgent matters and then—

Public Accounts committee  That and, as I said, the gap would not increase and would likely continue to decrease. It was not mentioned at what pace and all that. The only point that is made there, that we made at the time, is that the gap would likely decline. We didn't comment about any kind of pace of decline or anything like that.

Public Accounts committee  I think you have the report of the government with you, or if you don't, we could provide it to you, the one that has been published. I think this is the report. I think the other reports that are mentioned are not reports but are analyses that we are doing on a regular basis to advise the Minister of Finance.

Public Accounts committee  As I'm saying, it's what you just read there. They are analyses, not reports—just to be clear—that we did for the Minister of Finance to inform him about the situation, and so in that context it would be up to the Minister of Finance and the government to decide to release those analyses that were provided for advice to him.

Public Accounts committee  Sure, I will not re-craft but restate that we did analyses, and they are documented in this report, in the report of the Auditor General. I was just making the nuance about a report for publication. Those—

Public Accounts committee  —were internal analyses of the Department of Finance. They were not reports prepared for publication with the intention of getting them published. This was my only nuance.

Public Accounts committee  I just want to repeat that the government did say, in its response, that it would publish long-term fiscal sustainability analyses for the federal government, but not for the provinces, since the government is not accountable for the provinces.

Public Accounts committee  Yes, we accepted part of the recommendation.