Public Accounts committee  I actually am ready, sir.

Public Accounts committee  The Federal Accountability Act, in terms of how it applies, is fundamentally the purview, in terms of its internal changes, its internal audit changes, of Charles-Antoine, so it actually has no kind of direct applicability. It has accounting officer implications, which deputy min

Public Accounts committee  It was a cabinet decision announced on September 25. It was indicated in the budget last May, budget 2006, that the government would undertake to reduce its expenditures by $1 billion this year and $1 billion next year. The results of that review, which was a cabinet-approved pro

Public Accounts committee  There was an expenditure review cabinet committee. It was led by one of our colleagues at the officials level, who I guess was attached to the Privy Council Office.

Public Accounts committee  Yes, it was the previous one. In this particular case, the exercise was led by the Treasury Board Secretariat, by the President of the Treasury Board, and there was also a cabinet committee that was established by the Prime Minister. They met three times through the course of the

Public Accounts committee  We're working from your document, which for the meeting of November 2 says “Treasury Board Secretariat and expenditure management”, so there must have been a misunderstanding, because for us expenditure management and the expenditure management system mean something quite distinc

Public Accounts committee  Is that all right with you, Mr. Chairman? Merci beaucoup. Let me thank you for the invitation to be here. As you noted, this will be a little disjointed; we're a little bit out of phase. The secretary was not able to be here today. I believe he is scheduled, Mr. Chairman, t

Government Operations committee  The straightforward answer is that we as officials provide advice to our ministers. Our ministers make decisions. At the last meeting, the president tried to explain the full scan of government programming that went on prior to the bilateral discussions among ministers and amon

Government Operations committee  No, there was no analysis done on the entire package.

Government Operations committee  No, I believe it's a Heritage program.

Government Operations committee  Let me start, and then I'll turn it back over to Mr. Moloney. I think, in fairness, if you have questions about specific cuts and a view of the specific cuts and where they may have had their origins, it's worth having the individual ministers in to actually talk about the spec

Government Operations committee  Let me just start by saying that if you have a view, or if the committee shares the view that there was targeting, that's a view the committee has, that individual deputies or members actually have. We looked again across the full range of business-related activities, the full r

Government Operations committee  People at the bottom of...?

Government Operations committee  I think each individual deputy would have made a judgment as to who they needed to consult in their departments, so I can't answer that question.

Government Operations committee  I genuinely just can't answer the question. You'd have to ask each deputy how they managed the process in their department.