Transport committee  Negash can probably speak to that in more detail. He was the point person in coordinating them.

Transport committee  Negash has been with our office for a shorter period of time than me—an office I have been at, for better or for worse, since it was created in 2008—and I would characterize it as not being normal for us to submit an information request for data that departments and agencies are

Transport committee  Again, it's not for us to opine upon the instrument choice, but a point that we made in the past, which echoes a point that you've made, is that you are looking at longer term assets. While it's nice for the federal government—and here I'll paraphrase one of the provincial govern

Transport committee  Speaking from a capital budgeting, purely accounting perspective, absolutely. When you're drawing together your capital budget with respect to your various infrastructure assets that you're going to hold over a longer term period of time, you need some degree of certainty with re

Transport committee  I think that providing the provinces and municipalities with certainty with respect to funding flows and being able to plan around that is essential—again recognizing that 90% of the $80-plus billion that is spent every year on public infrastructure assets is not spent by the fed

Transport committee  About a month ago, as part of our issues note on budget 2018, we identified what I'll call an information gap with respect to the 12-year plan. We did follow up with the Department of Finance to ask for details with respect to the timing of the flows of close to $60-odd billion o

Transport committee  I will start with your last question first. As I responded to your colleague at the outset, one would anticipate—based upon the historical experience around new federal programs, and in particular new infrastructure programs—that the lapse rates would be higher at the outset. Tha

Transport committee  With respect to the delays, we are comparing them against the government's original forecasts from budget 2016. We're using the numbers from the fall economic statement from 2016 against the updates the government provided most recently, in budget 2018. We also triangulate or cro

Transport committee  The short answer is that as part of our forecasting, we are the federal parliamentary budget office and we look at things on a national basis.

Transport committee  Vis-à-vis the lapsing?

Transport committee  I would go back to a point made by your colleague, Mr. Hardie, with respect to the historical funds or infrastructure programs that existed prior to budget 2016, the government did make a commitment that, to the extent those funds were going to lapse, they'd be rolled into the ga

Transport committee  In terms of the productivity benefits of infrastructure, while we do account for that as part of our macroeconomic forecast, we haven't actually gone back and done the retrospective analysis. Again, from our perspective, where it ends up being useful and interesting is on the for

Transport committee  It could be.

Transport committee  Again, “risk” is a term we use with respect to our or anyone's forecast being slightly higher or slightly lower.

Transport committee  I think it's not up to the parliamentary budget office to opine about. It's not up to us to opine upon the granularity of the plan. It's obviously up to parliamentarians to decide whether they're comfortable with the plan that's being brought forward. Certainly, to go to back to