Government Operations committee  Thank you for the question. On the $21.6 billion, I will start by saying that 20% of that amount is for internal services within the Government of Canada. This means that we have Justice invoicing department clients. We also have Shared Services Canada invoicing clients, as well as PSPC.

Government Operations committee  Critical operating requirements are unexpected occurrences. For example, sometimes there are additional workloads that we didn’t anticipate and therefore were not part of the initial budget requests.

Government Operations committee  If you would like an answer regarding the Treasury Board Secretariat specifically, the Chief Financial Officer, Ms. Cahill, can also provide more details.

Government Operations committee  Thank you, Madam President of the Treasury Board. As you know, since it is often discussed at this committee, the federal budget is tabled around March, then the annual Estimates…

Public Accounts committee  It is a big annex that departments need to look at with the perspective of outcome-based results. It's also part of the policy on results. If it is a new program, obviously the analysis will be very strong and detailed. If it is a renewal of a program, the analysis will be less detailed.

Public Accounts committee  It's all about sharing information. We want to make sure that best practices are being shared so that departments having problems with capacity or with data collection can learn from best practices that we are putting out there. It's not only putting information out there but also having meetings with people involved in that domain to make sure that they do understand and do exchange.

Public Accounts committee  You are correct. We have already published two reports, and the third one will be published before the end of this calendar year. That report will be way more comprehensive because we have seen progress lately by departments in terms of data collection and capacity. We want to report on what we have seen—best practices—and we also know that there are still things to improve.

Public Accounts committee  GBA+ is mandatory for all Treasury Board submissions, depending on the program.

Public Accounts committee  You are completely right. We have a challenge function at Treasury Board, and we do so in Treasury Board's submissions, as an example. To go back to your question, we do a lot of back and forth with departments and agencies when we are not comfortable with what we are receiving in terms of implementation.

Public Accounts committee  The framework is evolving and we have programs that are becoming more and more complicated. We don't have a solution that fits all, so we really need to work in collaboration with departments to make sure we are doing the right analysis at the right level.

Public Accounts committee  The guidance is an evergreen document. It changes every year. Every time we learn something new from PCO or something new from WAGE, we integrate all of that in the guidance. It is a document that is evolving all the time. As I was saying, since 2017, we have had specificities in the GBA+.

Public Accounts committee  I really like that question, because my group is in charge of reviewing and challenging Treasury Board submissions. We review roughly 15 Treasury Board submissions every week, so every week there is interaction with departments and organizations to discuss what is missing in their plans, whether it is data collection, results or outcomes-based information.

Public Accounts committee  Yes, that is correct.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you very much. It's a very important question. We provide guidance to departments and agencies on a regular basis. We issue guidance on what we call the departmental plans, DP, as well as departmental results reports. They have to provide those every year. In between, we also meet with all people involved in that process to make sure that they understand the requirements that we have.

Government Operations committee  Thank you very much for the question. As referred to by the PBO, the first time that the strategic policy review was announced was in the federal budget for 2022. At that time, it was said that an update would be provided in budget 2023. The update was provided at the end of March.