Government Operations committee  The way we see this unfolding is that we would work with Shared Services Canada to look at all of the scope of services we do internationally, whether it be support or anything like that, and decide with that range of services what we would do and what Shared Services Canada would do.

Government Operations committee  For example, for an Internet service provider locally in one of our missions, the contract right now would go through Shared Services Canada. We would look to see whether it makes sense in those local circumstances for us to do the negotiation for that.

Government Operations committee  I'll let Martin answer.

Government Operations committee  Section 7 would be for the keyboard. I would be—

Government Operations committee  It's really our international operations. We would look at where it makes sense, where there are certain things that we could do for ourselves internationally, for which—

Government Operations committee  When we've looked at the potential impact of this, we're looking at standard goods. For us, the efficiencies would involve our ability to roll those out in a timely manner. We work very well with Shared Services Canada. The current procurement process is an additional step. By using established and pre-competed standing offers, it allows us to select....

Government Operations committee  No.

Government Operations committee  Most of those acquisitions that we do internationally, we do jointly. For example, for BlackBerrys in the field, we have done that jointly with Shared Services Canada. I think what we will be looking at, as Mr. Parker said, is where it's practical or efficient, or where there's a financial benefit to us, could we be doing some of those services internally?

Government Operations committee  No, not at this time.

Government Operations committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. My colleague Martin Loken and I want to thank you for the invitation to appear before the committee. It's a pleasure to be here. I'll make a few brief opening comments, after which I would be pleased to answer your questions. Global Affairs Canada is mandated to manage Canada’s international platform.

Foreign Affairs committee  It's too soon in the process.

Foreign Affairs committee  I don't have the breakdown by country, but we can find it.

Foreign Affairs committee  There are a couple of reasons for the increase. One is, as I said before, that we have a new program alignment architecture. What you saw in 2014-15 was right after amalgamation and our best estimate of where consular spending was happening across the organization. Over the course of the year, we refined those estimates, and part of the increase is due to that.

Foreign Affairs committee  We work closely with our colleagues at Treasury Board Secretariat. This issue was acute given what happened in January. Every individual mission has a good line of sight on their finances. We at headquarters work with our missions to balance those budgets where our first action is to look at how we manage within that using the supplementary estimates process to provide sufficient funding based on the projections at the time.

Foreign Affairs committee  What you'll see is that at the end of the fiscal year, we will have an amount left over in our budget. So if the opposite happened this year—if in January currency appreciated, and we had an excess amount—then that amount would be deducted from our reference levels in the following fiscal year.