Government Operations committee  There are two things. One, the contingency you're speaking of that was part of the budget is still there. There's still a $3 billion contingency fund built into the budget and that's just good financial planning. If you think about incidents like the Alberta floods or Lac-Méganti

Government Operations committee  That is absolutely the function of supplementary estimates, but again to get into supplementary estimates through Treasury Board it's not a three-day process. It's a long process, so you do have to get your ducks lined up, but you're quite right.

Government Operations committee  It is a bit of a misconception. When you think of the transfer payments, and equalization is the best example, they're based on revenues. It's about keeping departments whole from a revenue perspective. How they decide to spend that revenue is up to the province. Whether it's s

Government Operations committee  Thanks for that question. That links to the previous question as well quite nicely. When I spoke about improved costing in departments, that requires two things. One is that it requires more guidance, benchmarks, things like that, from the centre to go to departments. That cost

Government Operations committee  On an ongoing basis—and that's probably a better question for the Department of Finance or ESDC—I would expect it to be cost neutral. That's the intent of this. From year to year, yes, there will be the odd fluctuation, but on an ongoing, longer term nature, I would expect it to

Government Operations committee  That surplus was built up under the previous regime, so it's difficult for me to factor that into the new regime. If there had been no change, you'd have to ask if the premiums had been adjusted to reflect that surplus. It's difficult for me to say what that would be. I'm going b

Government Operations committee  I think that's a pretty good guess. I would take Marcia's word over mine.

Government Operations committee  I can't speak with certainty, but I would assume for the maintenance cost that would be a good estimate. I think it may only be eight months' worth of funding, so you would have to extrapolate that over 12 months. I would expect it would increase slightly when we're operating a f

Government Operations committee  Certainly, the P3 format is something the federal government has not done a lot of. A great example would be the bridge to P.E.I. Many of our provinces are making extensive use of P3s. The advantage to the government is around actually getting payment or linking payment to actu

Government Operations committee  One of the advantages is that it's self-contained. In terms of the facility itself, it's very modern. It's about 72,000 square metres. It does contain, if you look to modern buildings, lots of common space for meetings, facilitation, and things like that, so it's built to the new

Government Operations committee  Not of the total cost, no. I have what the current year will cost, and I think we've already covered off those figures. As for the total cost itself, I can't answer that question, but maybe my colleagues have something to offer. No?

Government Operations committee  Sure, and thank you for the question. What was being referred to there is, if you think about the expenditure management system in government, that involves everything from the budgets, cabinet decision-making, right through to Treasury Board's approval of spending, and then ac

Government Operations committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. In the first part of the meeting, I spoke too quickly on slide twelve of my slide deck when I was explaining the decrease in Citizenship and Immigration. I incorrectly stated that Passport Canada had left Citizenship and Immigration. It is in fact

Government Operations committee  Thank you for your question. The maintenance, of the $100 million it's $19.2 million, so let's say around $20 million just to be rough for maintenance, and about $75 million for what's called service payments and that's for the actual operations of the facility itself. It's dist

Government Operations committee  I'll start specifically with the DFAA, the disaster financial assistance arrangements. It's been in the main estimates before. What happens is that as with any government program, from time to time it expires, and it comes in for renewal. For the last round of renewal, it wasn't