Public Accounts committee  Those systems are all over 20 years old. All of their architecture, even code, is over 30 years old, so we are on the verge of seeing those systems collapse and my being unable to bring the president those blue books.

Public Accounts committee  Yes, certainly. What the Secretary mentioned concerns the deputy minister of each entity, department or other agency. Each deputy minister is responsible for ensuring, and being prepared to insure, the minister and Parliament that policies will in fact be respected. Moreover, t

Government Operations committee  Well, it doesn't today. But if we're moving into a world where we are explicitly taking account of the use of assets to deliver government services, which is precisely what this is about, Parliament now actually has the option, should you want it, of giving yourself that extra de

Government Operations committee  Let me just very briefly respond. I guess the issue is whether Parliament would like to have the ability to decide that the bus should be sold--not whether a coat of paint has extended the life but whether the government shouldn't have that bus, should sell it, or we should not

Government Operations committee  As an additional comment—not instead of the Comptroller General's comments—from the point of view of parliamentary control, Parliament may wish to allocate the tax resources available to it differently, and voting amortization does allow Parliament to essentially remove the abili

Government Operations committee  I guess the one distinction here would be that the amortization amounts do not kick in until the full cash disbursement takes place. So in this example, if it was just $25 million and then amortization, then we'd vote once, and then.... It's the fact that we won't actually have t

Government Operations committee  I wouldn't want to give explanations for why not, but it is a long-standing approach to parliamentary authority and control of spending that it is voted on year by year. Even though the government's books overall are on accrual now, or even if they were on cash, there's a multi-y

Government Operations committee  Can I very briefly speak to that? In principle we could bring forward capital plans for departments that would in essence do, I believe, what you're saying. The real point I wanted to make, though, was that of course the fiscal planners in government, through the budget, are ve

Government Operations committee  Madame Fraser, do you have any comment on that?

Government Operations committee  It would be as statutory, meaning that it's for your information. There is a fiscal consequence. It's being shown to you, but you don't actually vote on it, which means, among other things, you can't actually make a decision in respect of that asset without changing the legislati

Government Operations committee  The Comptroller General spoke of $224 billion as being the government spending, with $132 billion of that amount statutory, major statutory in debt service and transfers to persons and provinces, and then so-called minor statutory for another $11 billion. So in fact Parliament vo

Government Operations committee  That I would consider not to mean so much in accrual appropriations but in multi-year appropriations, which is a direction that certain governments have gone--not many--and it's certainly one in which issues of accountability and parliamentary control are raised quite a bit furth

Government Operations committee  Same again.

Government Operations committee  With respect to model 3, today we bring the main estimates, and the supply bill comes forward. Within each department there is a long series of votes, some of which are capital votes. With any entity that has more than $5 million of capital expenditures, there is a capital vote.

Government Operations committee  That's right. Looking at slide 7, which was the graphical representation of pulling the four.... If this was the only thing the department was doing and the only asset in question, there would be a vote for the $25 million, a vote for the $75 million, and then, in year three, vo