Government Operations committee  If I recall correctly, and I'll check it in a second, I have $600 million in my head. Just give me two seconds. I'll come back to your EI question, because I think it's a good one. Remember that with public accounts there are two volumes. Volume I is the financial statements o

Government Operations committee  I can't give you actual numbers. I can tell you that the Department of Finance posts on its website a list of equalization payments by province. Generally speaking, the criteria are the same. The only caveat I would add to that is that there are some other agreements, such as—I

Government Operations committee  I cannot, but I can look into it.

Government Operations committee  I'm sorry, Mr. Chair. I think questions on the equalization formula are probably better directed to the Department of Finance. It's really their—

Government Operations committee  I can take the question. Thank you for your question. In recent years, the EI model has changed. The new regime has the EI operating account, which actually tracks premiums in and expenses and revenues out. It was a tracking account. This was not money that was held in a separ

Government Operations committee  Thank you for the question. The way the account works, it basically has to cover off the administration of the account as well as the actual benefits that flow out of the account. The recognition on the EI account is that you don't look at it year by year. It's an economic cycle

Government Operations committee  I have to get there to show you. You would have seen a line at the end of that in previous years. It's employment insurance. Every other item in this estimates book would have had details on departmental expenses. EI never did. It's driven by a statute that actually requires rep

Government Operations committee  Sure. I have a couple of quick ones. We've moved to more e-reporting from departments; it used to be very much paper-based, but we're now getting more electronically. The other thing we did was to combine a couple of directorates so we actually consolidated our EX cadre to actu

Government Operations committee  Sure. There are a couple of things. If you looked at the estimates in previous years in discussions in this committee in terms of researchers, we were always talking about the link to budgets, estimates, and public accounts. That's the cycle. If you looked at estimates in previ

Government Operations committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. As usual, we have prepared a presentation to remind members of the committee of the content of the Government of Canada's estimates and to outline the government's estimates for the year ending March 31, 2015. There are two objectives here. The f

Government Operations committee  There's a separate allocation called family related leave, which I believe is a week a year if I recall correctly. That's what you would use if you have to take care of a child or something like that.

Government Operations committee  My understanding is that what's on the table is the sick leave regime itself, which implies sick leave for employees.

Government Operations committee  We've actually looked extensively across all industries, not just at the private sector but also in the pseudo-public sector as well. We're one of the few major employers left that actually have this regime. It's about modernizing the regime itself.

Government Operations committee  This actually isn't one contract, Mr. Chair. What's happened here is that departments used to be responsible for procuring end-user device software. That's software for your computer, software like Windows, Adobe, and things like that. Shared Services Canada is now responsible fo

Government Operations committee  There will be a savings attached to this. We have basically removed money from the reference levels of departments and we've given Shared Services Canada less than what we used to spend. They will negotiate on a government-wide basis and derive savings from that. This move will