It has to do with the fact that it's a portfolio. With respect to Public Safety--now it's Public Safety, but it was the Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness portfolio--there is a minister responsible for it, but there are at least six major organizations. Overall, it's 52,000 people and an over $5 billion budget, which is the largest civilian budget in government, but it's spread among a number of different agencies. There is a department, which is a relatively small organization within the portfolio, and one of their main jobs--certainly one of my main jobs as deputy minister at the time--was to be the senior public service adviser to the minister about all complex issues in the portfolio.
Mr. Baker is quite right. In the end, if Mr. Baker had concluded that he had to seek supplementary estimates, that was his decision. Basically, my role was to ask: have all the issues been considered?