Government Operations committee  Ontario does it that way, the statutory approach. B.C. is a model 3. So I can see both sides of the debate.

Government Operations committee  There might be a misunderstanding there. What's important is that the liability be recognized by the government and that you have sufficient evidence to be able to determine the amount of the liability. So a contract isn't necessarily in place, but at some point you have enough i

Government Operations committee  I would not be overly concerned with this aspect, for the simple reason that our statements are audited, and we're also moving to departmental financial statements. One of the key accounting principles is the consistency of the accounting, the depreciation of the amortization,

Government Operations committee  I think we would all agree that would be helpful. There's no question about it.

Government Operations committee  If I may, my experiences with large system change is that one of the errors we very often make is seeing it as a system change. We don't take into account the change of management, the people aspect. The people aspect is training, communications, and all the tools. This is very

Government Operations committee  Yes.

Government Operations committee  Yes.

Government Operations committee  I don't mind it being on the record, yes.

Government Operations committee  Of course. Yes.

Government Operations committee  These are two different things. When we were talking about accrual for fixed assets, in this presentation we gave you an example of fixed assets. But there are also some other elements, like financial assets, like loans, and so on, that would also need to be included in the actua

Government Operations committee  Yes, over time those costs should go down, so there should be a payback in having accrual.

Government Operations committee  I think we were going to say exactly the same thing. At the time, Prime Minister Martin made reference to budget and reporting, not the accrual appropriations.

Government Operations committee  If I recall the presentation by our colleagues from B.C., they were making reference to $5 million for training, exclusive of system costs. When we look to see what the average system cost is for financial purposes in the federal government, it's in the neighbourhood of $300 mill

Government Operations committee  Totally, but I am not traumatized by that. My colleagues in New Zealand, who carried out the same exercise 15 years ago, told me that they had to wait about ten years for people to understand what accrual accounting was, for purposes of both appropriation of funds and reporting.

Government Operations committee  Yes.