Government Operations committee  Thank you. I can start and try to give you some overall indication of what that supplementary estimates request was for. We may need to refer to our colleagues at the agency for more detail. We'll respond if you need it. The CPSA is looking for funding of $17.1 million for a nu

Government Operations committee  Yes, I can.

Government Operations committee  As you know, there was a strategic review undertaken of all the HR agencies, and the results were reported in the budget, in annex 3. This is not directly tied to the strategic review.

Government Operations committee  May I defer to my colleague, Hélène Laurendeau, on that question?

Government Operations committee  Yes, there was. Public service modernization and public service renewal activities are one component. A second component is classification reform activities for the Government of Canada in 2008-09. Third is the pay equity litigation support. Fourth was the campaign to be launched

Government Operations committee  Thank you. I will just refer to the information available to me. It may well be the case that the agency will have to come back with more detail, because I don't claim to be an expert on this. I understand that of the $17.1 million there is a significant amount of funding for pu

Government Operations committee  Yes, I actually do not have too much information on this, but I think the amount is only $120,000 of the total amount, and it's part of a horizontal cross-government advertising program, so it was a contribution to that on the part of CPSA.

Government Operations committee  Yes, I can, sir, briefly. Every year we establish the reference levels for departments for the forthcoming year through what is called the annual reference level update, our ARLU process. To boil it down to simplest terms, we take the previous year's budget for the department an

Government Operations committee  They can be quite frequent if we're in a heavy bargaining round. But I'll turn that question over to Hèléne.

Government Operations committee  I can address that. Yes, we do compensate departments for any changes due to collective agreements that have been settled, and we compensate them for the difference between their current budgets and the cost, essentially, that occurs through the collective agreements. So essenti

Government Operations committee  Thank you, Chair and committee. This is a unique central vote. We, of course, use central votes for other purposes, including contingencies, carry-forward paylists, and other further purposes. But this is a one-time-only vote, which would be used for a very limited time and woul

Government Operations committee  There is actually no difference in the way we would treat an item charged to the central vote from supplementary estimates (A) items, for example. All these items would be required to pass all the due diligence tests at Treasury Board. They would require approval by Treasury Boar

Government Operations committee  Actually, we have been in discussion with the Auditor General and we now have internal audit committees with external members in all departments who will already have started to conduct due diligence.

Government Operations committee  We can say this. When you look at the budget, you have the entire economic action plan in chapter 3. The Budget Implementation Act contains a number of specific measures, and the remainder will either be in the supplementary estimates (A) or the central vote. The central vote is

Government Operations committee  Could I address the two questions? I hear one being about the speed, and I will start with that. In a normal year cash would not flow until December. Last year we made a change. We introduced supplementary estimates (A) in June, and cash can now flow. Assuming we have supplemen