Finance committee  I will be brief. That is a very good question. It pertains not so much to the accuracy of the data from one source or the other as to how we can compare those data. This is a very important part of our mandate. It has been part of the discussion over the years about the role of

Finance committee  Chris.

Finance committee  I will quickly clarify something and then ask Mr. Matier to provide a more detailed explanation. We have our own model. The Department of Finance, for its part, relies on private sector projections. In my remarks, I noted that there was a delay with respect to the 2017 budget be

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Ladies and gentlemen of the committee, thank you for the invitation to appear and discuss our April 2017 economic and fiscal outlook. Today I am joined by Mostafa Askari, the assistant parliamentary budget officer, as well as Jason Jacques, Chris Matier, Ti

Transport committee  As you can see in the table, the funds that were set aside, as we learned last week, are not necessarily included, but they are in fact taken into consideration. If the trend holds and if the Parliamentary Budget Officer's analyses are correct, GDP growth in 2016-2017 will not re

Transport committee  Our presentation is somewhat more optimistic for the second year. That is why we said that we were going to track the money and ask for reports. When I mentioned reports, I was speaking about them in conjunction with other reports. Not only will we track the money for the infrast

Transport committee  I'll just take 10 seconds and then I'll let Mostafa speak. As you know, our mandate is under review by the government. The government indicated that they will review our mandate and provide more resources, not only in total but also in terms of costing and so on. Our mandate co

Transport committee  Do you mean in terms of reporting the money that they receive from the federal government?

Transport committee  It is known that some provinces, as I mentioned before—and certainly in the case of Quebec—tend to wait until the end of their fiscal year. That pattern has been seen previously with other projects.

Transport committee  For other provinces, they probably have the same kinds of practices. The Auditor General looked at this in the past and found some kind of a pattern that can be explained. There's a lot of seasonality in these infrastructure projects, as you know. You're coming from municipalitie

Transport committee  I suspect that Infrastructure Canada and the federal government do not necessarily want to impose some kind of accounting practice on a province. I think that's what the DM of Infrastructure Canada said in response to this committee a couple of weeks ago when he said that every o

Transport committee  Following the money until the end of a project may be difficult.

Transport committee  May I turn to Jason, quickly? He's the accountant at the table.

Transport committee  It is difficult to answer that question, because we don't yet have all of the information about how the infrastructure bank will function. The only thing that is certain is that it will not be based in Victoriaville.

Transport committee  Yes. That said, we still do not know all of the modalities regarding how the bank will work. Everyone expects an announcement in the next budget specifying how the Canada Infrastructure Bank will function. To answer your question, I must say that whether we are talking about a