You have two accounting systems. You have an accrual accounting system from the standpoint of our fiscal track. When you look at the budget, you'll look at the economic situation; you'll look at the forecasts that have been provided by the private sector forecasters; and you'll look at indicators such as nominal GDP growth, nominal GDP levels, interest rates, employment rates, the price of oil—all these different elements that feed into a projection on a fiscal basis on the fiscal track, but on an accrual basis.
From a very high level—and I might oversimplify this—if you take this TV in front of me, maybe it is worth $1,000. On a cash basis, maybe in year one you need $1,000 to be able to purchase that TV. We in the estimates world, in the supply world, operate on a cash basis, and with departments and so forth. So when we're coming to you with these estimates documents asking for parliamentary approval, it's on a cash basis. On an accrual basis, it's a bit different. That TV might have a lifespan of 10 years, and so it may be $100 a year for 10 years. So the fiscal impact is $100 as opposed to $1,000.
Again, it's an oversimplified example, but it gives you a sense that there is a distinction between accrual accounting and cash accounting. The budget reports on an accrual basis, and it provides not only the projection of government spending but also changes in the projection for, say, the fiscal balance—what the surplus or deficit might be projected in any given year—on the basis of the accrual projection. However from a supply standpoint, we basically are coming forward with main estimates and supplementary estimates that are seeking the cash needed to be able to do the operations.
When you look in the budget document, if you looked at the last year, you'd see that it included a reconciliation between the cash and the accrual on an aggregate to give you a sense of how they went from having, say, $300 billion to having about $360 billion on an accrual basis.