Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, unless there are statutory expenditures.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  When you get to the funding stage, you are relying on those costs. You are relying on those costs to determine how you should fund, and how much, and what kind of source of funds you need, as well as to determine the duration of your funding for that particular initiative. The fa

Procedure and House Affairs committee  You've asked a number of questions there. Treasury Board has provided information to the PBO based on the requests we've received from him. They are consistent with the provisions of the Parliament of Canada Act. Where he has asked for information that is deemed to be cabinet con

Procedure and House Affairs committee  His entitlements are spelled out pretty clearly in the Parliament of Canada Act, and they don't include information contained in cabinet confidences.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  We have some differences of opinion, no doubt, between DND, which does its cost assessments, and PBO on these matters. I am really not qualified to talk about the PBO study on the F-35s and the quality of the methodology, the application of the model that was used. DND would be.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  In the case of the F-35s or some other analyses that are done by PBO, there are also differences of assumption and differences of models used. Those also need to be factored in. It's not just a matter of facts and differences on the facts.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  The Treasury Board very frequently says no to all kinds of initiatives, and it also reduces the cost of initiatives. It provides a fair amount of scrutiny of the cost of initiatives when they get to the point where they are very well articulated and are ready for funding.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  You make a good point, because the Treasury Board's job is to do due diligence on these sorts of issues and these costs. Indeed, there may well be disagreement with the department over how many prisoners there will be or how many jail cells, or what have you. We will apply a cert

Procedure and House Affairs committee  We will be questioning many aspects of the analysis that is undertaken.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  It's very hard for us to second-guess the department on costs for some of these bills. They are accountable for preparing the cost estimates based on the guide that we require them to use. Also, their chief financial officers sign off on the costs. If they cannot identify a cost

Procedure and House Affairs committee  As I was mentioning, they are accountable. They are signing off on these costs. If they say there is no cost involved, it is very difficult for them to come to Treasury Board, for example, and ask for funding. Because they said there was no cost involved, they would have to absor

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I'm saying that it's the responsibility of the department--the deputy head and the chief financial officer--to identify the costs. They essentially are signing off on this. That is an important accountability, and we don't second-guess them on that. That's not to say that costs c

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Again, the departments you talked to earlier today have done a fair amount of work in these areas. They know these areas very well. They know these areas better than we do, and they've come up with an assessment of what will cost them, among the many bills you've been looking at,

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I think many considerations go into a cabinet decision as to a bill, cost being one of them. I think all members of any cabinet would want to know as much as they possibly could about the potential costs. That being said, it's sometimes very difficult to determine what those cost

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I can't disagree that having cost information improves decision-making; it certainly does. You have the role of the standing committees, House debates; you have opportunities to ask for that information to decide whether you're going to vote for a bill or not.