Government Operations committee  That's a good point. Again, with respect to incorporating the additional information, I think everyone would agree with you. That said, there is the reality check that under the current internal guidelines produced by the Treasury Board Secretariat, these interim estimates are ac

Government Operations committee  I have nothing to add to that.

Government Operations committee  I think the cleanest acid test is actually going to the Treasury Board Secretariat's departmental plan for this year, where they indicate that the target for the coming year is that 100% of items from the budget will be tabled in the most immediate supplementary estimates. That's

Government Operations committee  Well, the precise language is that's in the next estimates.

Government Operations committee  The next estimates, after the budget, will actually be the new date for the main estimates, so....

Government Operations committee  I think we have the much easier job of providing analysis to the committee and to parliamentarians.

Government Operations committee  As we've pointed out in the past, we've suggested that parliamentarians ask the government for a plan regarding how they're actually planning on implementing and achieving this target.

Government Operations committee  I think were we to actually see a plan, then just based upon the regular analytical approaches that we take we'd be able to actually look at the plan, determine where the risks are, determine the likelihood of achieving the results, and determine, of course, how those risks could

Government Operations committee  Alex.

Government Operations committee  Sure. In the specific case of Australia, many years of work were undertaken leading up to that alignment. To highlight the point that the President of the Treasury Board and Mr. Pagan made in the past at this table, and that we've also made, it is a complex undertaking, but agai

Government Operations committee  I think the only observation we would make, going back to Jean-Denis' opening statement, is that the government attempted to do precisely this in 2007 and 2008 with the creation of the spring supplementary estimates (A). Largely it's been a failure over the past 10 years. We've a

Government Operations committee  That's precisely the observation we made, and have been making over the past eight months, that the problem does not rest within Parliament but rather within the government and within the public service itself. Until they actually fix those internal processes and until Parliament

Finance committee  The figure does incorporate the collective agreements that have been signed. As the starting point for our forecast for direct program expenses, and particularly for operating expenses, we start with the baseline produced within the government's budget, which incorporates the col

Finance committee  I'll just add very quickly that some of the best data we have access to comes from provincial budgets. That provides the best go-forward look regarding how much infrastructure spending will actually occur, because, of course, the federal government is transferring the money to pr

Finance committee  That's a great question. It's in anticipation. That's why the provincial data is so critical, because it's actually their planned spending...the people on the ground across the country who are responsible for delivering these projects. One of the key weaknesses in the federal da