Thank you for the question.
Madam Chair, I can address the question of the study of the concepts of accrual accounting, and with respect to the pilot project, I'll pass that over to my colleague Mr. James.
The study has actually been completed, Madam Chair. It was carried out over the period from September to March this past year. It has been presented internally to one of our policy committees in the Treasury Board Secretariat, and the next step is to work on how we actually go about making a final decision.
We asked the consultants to give us some options to look at, to give us a rough idea of what it would take to implement these options, in terms of time and cost and approach and the readiness of departments and agencies to actually do this work. So we need to do that.
In the context of other things that are happening, we did the study as a joint project between the Office of the Comptroller General and the expenditure management sector. As I mentioned earlier, both those groups have a strong interest in the study because there are appropriations that are legal concepts and there is accounting, which is a concept that we have more control over.
I think we have good ground to work from, but we do need to go through some consultations. There are other exercises that have been launched. One is the review of the expenditure management system that was launched in budget 2006. The other one was launched more recently in the context of the Federal Accountability Act, and that was a committee--a blue-ribbon panel perhaps--which is in the process of being established to look at financial management in government and financial management policies. So these things should all come together. I think those two initiatives are expected to be reported upon by the end of this calendar year, so hopefully we can put some sort of package together there. Unfortunately, I don't have details on how those things will unfold yet. I don't think anybody does.
Perhaps Mr. James could talk about the pilot project.