The accession consists of operational registry files migrated to the new registry of the Economic Sector set up in 1996. The records cover the years 1958 to 1988. The Economic Sector is one of several parallel sectors that derive from a merger of several functions of older defunct Program and Administrative Policy Branches and the separate Office of the Comptroller General, abolished as a separate department in the same year. From the dates, it is obvious that most records were migrated from older file classification systems, mostly those of the Program Branch.
The purpose of the new parallel Sectors set up in 1996 is to provide single windows of program delivery for the broad business line of resource planning and expenditure management to three or four broadly functional portfolios of interrelated agencies, departments and crown corporations. The Economic Sector coordinates and monitors the allocation of financial resources in relation to government priorities, fiscal targets and performance results; it provides analysis and recommendations to Treasury Board on departmental business plans, the corporate plans of crown corporations and the resource implications of policy options and priorities under consideration by Cabinet; it develops and maintains accountability frameworks through which departments report performance results to Parliament; it prepares the final estimates and appropriation bills that arise from the complex set of annual cycles of government-wide fiscal planning and reporting. The Economic Sector also fosters innovative management and increased effectiveness in program delivery across the agencies and departments within the defined portfolio of agencies and departments associated with the delivery of economic programs. Agencies within the portfolio include Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., Canadian National Railways, the Department of Agriculture, Statistics Canada, and in general agencies and crown corporations associated with regional economic development, the environment, Transportation, natural resources, Industry, fisheries, research, intellectual property and standards.
Records in this accession divide into three broad types, those series related directly to stages in the coordination activity of the various cycles of the expenditure management system, those related to detailed assessments of agency business lines and programs and those more general policy files related to budget coordination, evaluation criteria and the expenditure management system.
