Thank you, Mr. Chair. Sometimes in this role we become quite critical in design. Unfortunately, that’s part of our role as legislators and part of our role in going through budget as we are doing before the House.

It’s also an opportunity, and I’ve said this many times, when I see something that’s going well, I pay credence to that as well. This is one of those areas. I believe there has been significant improvement, and we’ve echoed that in the tabling of the public

accounts. I really want to echo the fact that this was a lot of work to change a mindset of trying to get numbers, analysis of numbers, financial numbers, the reporting aspects in time to work with the Auditor General of Canada. We’ve seen a remarkable improvement in the last two years since we rekindled the public accounts program.

I wanted to make sure I went on record because sometimes that gets missed. For the record, there are no questions here, Mr. Chair. This is a classic example of when a department works with committee, we can get great things done. That’s what I want to leave you with. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Dolynny, for that good news. Mr. Miltenberger, would you like to respond to that?

On behalf of the Department of Finance and the office of the comptroller general, I would like to thank the Member for his accolades and kind words in this House and on the record. As he’s indicated, good work was done, an enormous amount of work by all parties. I just thank the Member. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Committee, we are on page 5-25, activity summary, office of the comptroller general, operations expenditure summary, $49.567 million. Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just wanted to follow up. I did find the document I was referencing. It wasn’t the Minister’s words, it was the program review office had looked at the payroll tax compliance and in a couple of reports they made reference to that. The first one, October 30, 2012, they said: “Growth in taxes” meaning payroll taxes here, “has not kept pace with growth in non-resident income. Suggestions: we may not be achieving desired results, may not be operating optimally, may require increased resources.” Perhaps that’s partly the compliance officer that Mr. Kalgutkar referred to.

In the second reference, February 27, 2013, about a year ago, they gave this issue a high score, meaning it really should be given some priority. It was categorized for consideration in the 2014-15 work plan which is under discussion today through the budget. I don’t have an official citation here, but is there any intent to look at the compliance issues that we seem to be hearing about with collection of payroll tax? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Mr. Kalgutkar.

That’s fine. Thanks very much. Perhaps the Minister’s discussion paper on that developed in consultation with the Regular Members could be part of that. That’s all I had. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley.Committee, we are on page 12-25, activity summary, office of the comptroller general, operations expenditure summary, $49.567 million.

Page 5-26, activity summary, office of the comptroller general, grants and contributions, $11.085 million. Ms. Bisaro.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I need to ask a question here with regard to the Power Subsidy Program and the subsidy that we are paying out. I’ll start by saying I notice a doubling of the amount between our actuals in 2012-13 to what we estimated in this current budget year and the budget year we are now discussing. So why is there such a large increase from actuals to estimates? Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Mr. Kalgutkar.

So that begs the question if our actuals are down that much, why are we estimating $11 million instead of $6 million? Thank you.

You mean we might have a slush fund to play with. That’s a humorous comment, Mr. Chair.

My question has to do with the increase in our power rates and with consumers not being subsidized anymore, because we’ve been subsidizing, I think, 7 percent, 7 percent, 7 percent, 5 percent. Is there a relationship between the loss of that subsidy on our power rates or the increase on our power rates and will there be a corresponding increase on this Power Subsidy Program because our residents are going to be paying the full rate now? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Kalgutkar. Committee, we’re on page 5-26, activity summary, office of the comptroller general, grants and contributions, $11.058 million. I’ll read that number again, $11.085 million.

Page 5-27, information item, office of the comptroller general, active positions. Any questions?

Page 5-29, activity summary, office of the chief information officer, operations expenditure summary, $2.260 million.