Government Operations committee  I would like to talk about the budget of Transport Canada. If you look at the detailed breakdown, operating expenditures in the main estimates are actually higher in 2015-16 than in the 2014-15 main estimates. Capital expenditures are showing a decrease, and that is largely because of a transfer of resources related to the Detroit River international crossing to the new authority for the bridge, so operating is up, capital is down, and that's why you're seeing the decrease.

Government Operations committee  There are two items I'll flag for you. Part of it is statutory. A net decrease of $110 million is related to the Atlantic offshore accords, and that's a statutory amount calculated by formula. The other big decrease is $110.8 million related to Sustainable Development Technology Canada as well as the next-generation biofuels fund.

Government Operations committee  No, that's not what I said, Mr. Chair.

Government Operations committee  The decision to actually continue is....

Government Operations committee  Programs are put in place for five years, generally speaking. There's an evaluation. At the end of that evaluation there are basically tweaks recommended to the continuation of programs or in some cases there are recommendations that the program not be continued.

Government Operations committee  I will, and if need be Mr. Pagan can help me out. This is another example, Mr. Chair, of sunsetting programs so the last word, as the minister said, is not the main estimates. There are some programs that are expiring, and we will know in the coming weeks and months the extent to which they have been—

Government Operations committee  Basically, the way the government programming works is that most programs are put in place for five years at a time. After five years they go through an evaluation.

Government Operations committee  Thanks for the question. Generally speaking—I'm not speaking about Marine Atlantic specifically—what's at play is incremental funding. Departments, corporations all have a base amount of funding they count on. The variance you'll see in departments from one year to the next, or in crown corporations, is incremental funding, sunset funding, as the minister mentioned.

Government Operations committee  Thank you for the question. As the member has already said, the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer has done a certain amount of research on the missions. I believe the Department of National Defence released their own estimates of what the mission would cost. Understand that when the PBO does work in this area, they are basing their estimates on industry standards.

Government Operations committee  I do, and Brian Pagan can fill in some additional detail if need be. This starts with the negotiation of collective agreements as they expire. The significant chunk that's remaining is made up of the employees who work for the Canada Revenue Agency. That's about 26,000 of the 28,000 remaining public servants who are not on the new regime.

Government Operations committee  The games themselves are in 2015, so the money is required to get these venues in place for those games. Basically, we're looking at the current fiscal year as well as the next fiscal year. I believe there is some funding that will go to the organization for ongoing operations as well.

Government Operations committee  In terms of the construction facilities, I would doubt it, because this is a one-time.... Toronto is hosting some games and the money is for three facilities: the University of Toronto, York University, and the velodrome in Milton. That piece is one-time, and—I'm going from memory here—I think there's a little bit of funding for operating that goes with that as well.

Government Operations committee  It's largely for existing repairs and upgrades to existing assets: highways, bridges, and dams. The money is spread across multiple parks. It's not one or two parks; there are a number of projects. I've mentioned two several times, but I don't have any additional examples. This is not a project that's specific to one or two parks; this is ongoing repair and maintenance of existing infrastructure, so it's across the whole inventory of parks.

Government Operations committee  I can't say there's none. The bulk of it is to repair existing...unless you have an existing asset that's in such disrepair it makes more sense to replace it with something new. But as far as I understand it, this is about replacing and repairing existing infrastructure.

Government Operations committee  I'm not sure how Parks Canada would manage that. They would have plans. I'm not sure if I could get you a list of whether something involves repairs or it's brand new. I don't have that at my disposal. It's possible that the department would.