Government Operations committee  Thank you.

Government Operations committee  Thank you, Madame Ratansi. We would be looking for direction or input from parliamentarians in terms of how to expand the pilot—should it be confined to Gs and Cs and rolled out to a broader subset of departments, or should it encompass other votes, including operating and capit

Government Operations committee  Risks would be related to challenges in dealing with old and rickety financial systems—there are some challenges there—and depending on the contours of the purpose-based votes, the complexity that would be introduced in terms of managing programs and services for Canadians. At th

Government Operations committee  It was primarily forecasting, looking at your demand requirements and making sure that you're forecasting appropriately for year-end. Mr. Lapointe may have some other insights.

Government Operations committee  Mr. Kelly, on that point, the supply cycle is very restrictive, as you know. Government can only introduce supply to the House of Commons on the last opposition day in each of the three supply periods. If something were to happen in advance of that supply date—we had an instance

Government Operations committee  Currently most departments are on an annual appropriation that ends at fiscal year-end, March 31st, but within that annual appropriation there is a construct of a permitted carry-forward amount. In the operating budget space, departments can carry forward up to 5% of their main e

Government Operations committee  Thank you. That's a very good question in terms of understanding how we approached this pilot. There were two primary risks identified with moving from a big aggregate vote to smaller votes, and we've touched on those. They are the increased complexity and the rigidity or chall

Government Operations committee  The other is that currently we have two models before Parliament. Most departments operate on an annual appropriations basis, but a small subset of departments, those being Canada Revenue Agency, Canada Border Services Agency, and Parks Canada, have two-year non-lapsing authoriti

Government Operations committee  Again, it would depend on the specific structure of the purpose-based votes going forward, but we've identified two issues that would likely be required to balance that control and ongoing latitude to manage programs. Those are the issues of year-end carry-forwards and transfers

Government Operations committee  We can only supplement existing authorities if sufficient funds or a grant does not exist in a department. If a grant exists but is oversubscribed, the first recourse would be to transfer from existing authorities.

Government Operations committee  Notwithstanding the success the Department of Transport had with a very limited pilot, this is potentially a major change for the system in terms of financial systems and business processes. I think it would be prudent to look at options to scale up and expand slowly with another

Government Operations committee  Exactly. In speaking with the president when we began the process of estimates reform, I think he had suggested we would expand to three, four, or five additional departments and then engage parliamentarians again on whether this was working and then roll it out gradually, based

Government Operations committee  In undertaking the work on the TB results policy and the approval of the departmental results frameworks, we did have discussions with departments so that they understood that the results framework could be the basis of parliamentary control going forward. Departments are general

Government Operations committee  All that is to say, Mr. McCauley, that expanding the pilot will introduce more complexity in terms of systems and business processes. We estimate that it would take somewhere between four and eight months to work those things out. Looking forward, Mr. Lapointe mentioned the conc

Government Operations committee  No, in the sense that money is still directed and departments are still accountable to report how money was approved and expended by purpose. The issue is that if there is a change in a dollar from Mr. Lapointe's corridors grant to his infrastructure grant, does that dollar or h