Government Operations committee  You know, I think we are on record in the office as recommending accrual budgeting: that the main estimates be done on an accrual basis. I understand that there are some complexities to this and that you have to also consider the cash side of the appropriations. We are on record

Government Operations committee  Again, in terms of the details of the mechanisms and the internal workings, it's not something we have done an audit of, so I think it would be the government officials who would have to tell you what those actual processes are. It's not something we've looked at or made a recomm

Government Operations committee  We did an audit that included the G-8 legacy fund, but my understanding is that it didn't include something dealing with those transfers. We did make observations about the G-8 legacy fund, though.

Government Operations committee  Our office has always promoted and will always promote government transparency and accountability. I can't speak to the specific item you're talking about or the response to the government, because it's just not something we have looked at or have audited, but as a general concep

Government Operations committee  I think I'll answer the question by going back again to my experience in New Brunswick, which is a small province when compared to the complexity of the federal government. In New Brunswick, when we tabled a budget that included an amount of total expenses we also tabled main est

Government Operations committee  Again, it was a surprise to me when I got here and found out that the main estimates are actually done on a different basis from the budget and the financial statements. I see that we've made a recommendation on it: that there should be full accrual budgeting in the main estimate

Government Operations committee  The argument I guess essentially is.... Well, if you start with the financial statements of a government, the financial statements of a government that represent “here's what happened during the year”—so they're backward-looking documents—have to be prepared on an accrual basis.

Government Operations committee  As a personal observation and simply going back to my history—and again, understanding that I don't know the complexity of the federal government process—I always felt that it was important to have the main estimates on the same basis as the budget and as the financial statement,

Government Operations committee  So in that type of approach, you need to have both. You need to have the expense on an accrual basis, but then you need to consider also including some other items that represent additional cash that would have to be paid out.

Government Operations committee  Certainly we are always willing to sit down with any member of the committee and talk through what we know about it. But again, we haven't done any audits and we're not doing any audits on this, so we're not going to present any report to Parliament on that. We have also presen

Government Operations committee  I think there were a couple of things in there. Yes, the practice we had in New Brunswick was very much an alignment between the budget and the main estimates. But I think you started the question by saying that people have suggested moving the fiscal year-end—

Government Operations committee  I'd have to look at that. I have a hard time understanding moving the fiscal year-end. To me, it just potentially moves all of the problems to different dates.

Government Operations committee  Thank you for the clarification. I think I understand better. Instead of moving the fiscal year-end, the same thing could be accomplished by saying that the budget needs to come out in December or in January or whenever, right? As I said, the capital budget in New Brunswick w

Government Operations committee  Again, we have made the recommendation that the main estimates should be on the same basis, an accrual basis, as the budget and the financial statements. We have also made the comment that when you can't make the reconciliation between the main estimates and the budget, it makes

Government Operations committee  I'll go back to my experience in New Brunswick. The main estimates would have agreed with the budget, so when the budget was brought down there was a main estimates document that tied in exactly to the budget. Subsequent to that, during the year it would be possible that there wo