Government Operations committee  Mr. Chair, I think Christine wants to add something.

Government Operations committee  Excuse me, Chair. We had two follow-up questions that we have answers for. Can I maybe intervene now? One was for Mr. Martin, and one was on CFIA. Can we maybe provide those answers?

Government Operations committee  I'll take the first one, and I'll turn to Marcia for the second one. Mr. Chair, Mr. Martin asked a question on liabilities. We were looking at market debt, foreign debt versus Canadian currency. I'm looking at the public accounts. At the end of 2013 total payable in foreign cur

Government Operations committee  It's possible that you could have debt with a foreign bank but that it's payable in Canadian currency. What I've given you is that it's payable in Canadian currency so there's no foreign exchange risk, but I can't say who is actually holding it.

Government Operations committee  If we're looking at negotiating a short-term disability program—

Government Operations committee  The current sick leave regime, as you mentioned, has one and a quarter days...or 15 days a year. That is the alternative to that. If you're negotiating a new short-term disability plan, that would be on the table, but I can't comment as to how the negotiations will go.

Government Operations committee  Eleven per cent have no banked sick days at all. So 11% of employees, if they take one sick day, are not paid for it. EI doesn't kick in for one day.

Government Operations committee  They've used up their days. We have 60% who don't have enough to carry them through to long-term disability.

Government Operations committee  Central votes are a little special, so thank you for that question. These are votes where we actually take the funds and allocate them out to departments. Parliament approves Treasury Board Secretariat to receive money on a central vote. Then Treasury Board Secretariat, through T

Government Operations committee  To the extent they have new employee costs in that money, the same thing would apply. But maybe, since we're always looking for ways to improve estimates, if your message to us, Mr. Chair, is that the horizontal descriptions we have in the upfront piece of the estimates would be

Government Operations committee  Certainly. Thank you for the question. The vast majority of this funding relates to actually rates of pay. I did mention the nine agreements in the core public service, but just to refresh, those were aircraft operators; correctional services; executives; FIs, our finance group

Government Operations committee  The actual forecast is based on multiple sets of interest rates, but the bulk of our debt is long term in nature. Finance has been adjusting their strategy over the years to take advantage of better rates. If it's an area of interest for you, there's an excellent report on the

Government Operations committee  Christine, did you want to take that one?

Government Operations committee  In terms of getting spending back down, absolutely. The deficit reduction action plan or strategic and operating review had a specific target in mind. That target was met, and funding to departments was reduced over a three-year period to allow them time to implement those change

Government Operations committee  Sure. Thank you for the question. If you go back in recent history over the last three years voted is going down. If you went back to 2011-12, voted spending was $99.9 million, down to $98.6 million in 2012-13, and down to $94.8 million in 2013-14. There are really two main reas