Environment committee  Within the process, the committees are open to ask any question about anything. There's no restriction on subject matter. In relation to the estimates specifically, the formal function of the committee is to receive the votes that are referred to this committee. So in the estima

Environment committee  The short answer is very little. There are specific authorities related to the program that are under the purview of Treasury Board. So we might have technical involvement, in the approval of corporate plans, for example, that set out the incremental spend and that sort of thing,

Government Operations committee  After budget 2016, I believe, we published a reconciliation from the budget in the first supplementary estimates that were tabled after the budget. To the extent that we have supplementary estimates of some sort following a budget, we will continue that practice. What was starte

Government Operations committee  There are two parts to your question. On the second part, which is the most straightforward part, no, we don't work on a zero-based budgeting in the sense that we don't every year rebuild everybody's budget from nothing. What actually happens is that every time there is a fun

Government Operations committee  No, not necessarily. Your base for next year would be whatever your original approval would have carried. If it was $100 million ongoing, your base would still go back to $100 million.

Government Operations committee  Because it is a pilot and because people become creatures of habit, they talk about what we're doing now with the same language that they've been using to talk about what we used to do, which is why we get this kind of mix-up where people say that they're asking for 25% or three-

Government Operations committee  Now, if I could refer back to Mr. Blaikie's earlier point about referring to a main estimates amount, in some ways, because we have this practice of carrying previous approvals in an ongoing A-base, they have, at any given time, an idea of what next year's main estimates would be

Government Operations committee  The $3 million—

Government Operations committee  —that we've traditionally had at least for the last 10 years or so in vote 10 is the ongoing A-base. It's money that's always been there and it's uncommitted in vote 10. In the fall supplementary estimates and then in these supplementary estimates, we've moved towards using vot

Government Operations committee  Pardon me?

Government Operations committee  It's a Treasury Board decision to use vote 10.

Government Operations committee  The committee of ministers takes the decision.

Government Operations committee  The committee of ministers takes the decision. It's proposed to them in a submission. It's proposed to them to use vote 10 as the instrument for holding the funds until more specific decisions are made. If you recall, in the fall, we used it to hold—

Government Operations committee  Pardon me?

Government Operations committee  The $90 million is sitting in Treasury Board vote 10 until a subsequent submission comes up that determines the details of how the funding is going to be flowed from the departments involved. At the time we established the supplementary estimates, that hadn't been determined yet.