Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, we did our own projection. Our projection results are quite similar to those of the Department of Finance. You can see that in exhibit 7.5 on page 21. The chart is not a prediction in the sense that it carries preciseness, but it's the trend line that counts. Accordi

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, I just want to make sure that I got the question properly. The member is referring to paragraph 7.24, the $925 million. He quoted a number of $900 million. What rings a bell right away is the paragraph referring to income splitting for pensions.

Public Accounts committee  This is an estimate prepared by the Department of Finance, and the department would be in a better position to answer this. It is not so much about the amount of savings that one can afford or not, but rather to make a comparison between the growth of the economy and productivity

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, I thank the member for that clarification. Essentially, for this particular measure, the Department of Finance did not do an analysis, because of the reasoning that there are the two-income families. It really is the sentence above that talks about the reduction of th

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, I'll attempt to answer the question once again. The $925 million is an estimate into the long term, so it wasn't something that we would be auditing. It was an estimate only to that level of precision, and that's why we didn't try to audit that particular number. So th

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, not on this particular tax measure.

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, in the recommendation, we asked for a complete picture for Canada as a whole. This is particularly relevant when you are dealing with big changes that affect federal-provincial transfers. On the one hand, while you have a picture whereby the federal finances have chang

Public Accounts committee  Our recommendation is to have such information published in the public domain. We suggested that it would be from time to time, so we're certainly not trying to put excessive onus on the government and the Department of Finance to try to produce this type of information on an an

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, certainly, I'm not aware of any particular prohibition. It depends on the sensitivity and the confidentiality of the information that the provinces choose to share with their federal counterpart. If there is indeed confidential information, then obviously that should n

Public Accounts committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think I've indicated what our recommendations are composed of, and I don't have comments to add.

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, certainly these are projections and not predictions, so they don't come with any precision with respect to what the point estimates might be. Even with our estimation, if you look at the graph on page 21, exhibit 7.5, you'll see we've included grey zones. That's why th

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, we did not specifically look at the impact of spending measures in our audit. Having said that though, when we look at the overall analysis for budget 2012, we identify that spending measures would be an important factor as well in terms of making sure the government i

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, we have not done a specific analysis on spending restraint as a measure. We looked at six specific measures and we looked at the overall impact. We would not be able to identify the exact extent to which the spending restraint contributes to the overall improved pictur

Public Accounts committee  I'm sorry, Mr. Chair, it's the Canada health transfer program.

Public Accounts committee  In the report we highlighted primarily three factors: the CHT, the Canada health transfer program; the old age security, increasing the age of eligibility; and the spending restraint. But the lion's share is borne by the CHT program.