Public Accounts committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Members of the committee, good afternoon. We are pleased to be here to answer questions on the Public Accounts for the fiscal year that ended on March 31, 2014. As you already mentioned, I am joined today by two colleagues: Michel Vaillant, Acting Executi

Public Accounts committee  Before my colleague responds, the page reference— this is on page 2.43 in the French version. It's 2.43 in French.

Public Accounts committee  Maybe I'll start and then let my colleague from Finance finish. That's been a steady decline. When you think about the public debt charges, if I recall correctly, going back to 1996-97 our expenses on public debt were eating up about 30% of our expenses. That leaves 70%, just gr

Public Accounts committee  Thank you for the question. I'm going to turn to my colleague to give me the page number—

Public Accounts committee  It's on page 1.10 in French. Thank you. This is the transfer payment section and if you look at the public accounts, we list the main elements on page 1.9. We start with elderly benefits, those being your guaranteed income supplement and your old age security. As we've discussed

Public Accounts committee  Those are the major components there, and then that makes up a fairly significant portion of our total spending, as you can see. What I will say about the transfers to persons, especially the GIS/OAS, is that from a government planning perspective those are statutory in nature,

Public Accounts committee  The big two there are the Canada health transfer and the social transfer, and I believe those were legislated increases in the past year, so those are the two big numbers driving those. You have other ones as well, but those are the two main ones I would highlight for you. Nick,

Public Accounts committee  The “other” would be things like one-offs. If I recall correctly, the transfer to the Province of Alberta related to flood relief is in other transfers. It's not a regular program. That's a one-off you would see. That is driving the change there.

Public Accounts committee  That's why you see the increases. If I remember correctly, the Alberta flood relief is in that number, and it was $2.2 billion.

Public Accounts committee  In terms of what else is in that $34 billion, maybe if you can give me a minute we can answer your question, but we'll come back to that one. If you wanted to keep going down that list, you have other program expenses for crown corporations and departments and agencies. The amo

Public Accounts committee  Thank you for the question. You'll recall that the government put in place the economic action plan, which resulted in growth in spending, and then on the heels of that, as that was wound down, the government went through some reductions. Certain categories of spending were off

Public Accounts committee  I can comment on the lapse in general, and I will get back to your specific question. The lapse in general is not well understood. I do want to make one very important point. When Parliament authorizes spending, it's an “up to” amount. It's not that you must spend a hundred; it'

Public Accounts committee  I can't speak to the plans on the shipbuilding and what the Parliamentary Budget Officer's analysis is based on. There have been delays. As I've said, as time goes on, you do lose inflation dollars on things like steel.

Public Accounts committee  I have a couple of comments on the pension plan in general. The liabilities of the government's pension plan are included in the financial statements, and you'll see those there. The pension plan produces its own financial statements. The organization in question here is a crown

Public Accounts committee  Thank you for the question. I have a couple of thoughts on that. The table, which in the English version is on page 1.24 if you're trying to follow along, presents a 10-year history. That's the reason we stopped at 2005 in this case. We gave a 10-year history, which is a nice co