Natural Resources committee  Essentially, the asset that was sold was, frankly, fundamentally human resources. There was—

Natural Resources committee  I don't have the figure with me.

Natural Resources committee  Yes, absolutely, sir.

Natural Resources committee  For AECL, the crown corporation that remains, no, it has not, because it has basically gotten out of the business of pursuing commercial sales of reactors. Candu Energy is now working on a new contract in Argentina, which is a refurbishment of the reactor in Argentina.

Natural Resources committee  That was announced in the summer of 2011. It was actually announced shortly before the sale that the contract would be going ahead.

Natural Resources committee  I think that's correct, sir.

Natural Resources committee  No, that's okay. Number one, you said hundreds of millions of dollars of assets. I did not say that; you said that. I will have to come back to you on the assets. On the contract, the $400-some million—$440 million, as I recall—is essentially a revenue stream that has to be matched by the actual commitments on the part of Candu Energy to meet that requirement, to do the work.

Natural Resources committee  Can I—

Natural Resources committee  Mr. Chair, we are expecting to announce the name of the recipients of the contributions in January. That is when we will have tied down the negotiation of the contribution agreements. I think it's fair to expect that we will again be encouraging research into two competing technologies, the cyclotron and the accelerators, and ensuring at the end of the day that either both technologies find a role or that the best of the two technologies succeeds in making it to market.

Natural Resources committee  The U.S. has been putting some significant resources into this, greater amounts than we have, but I'm not sure they have had the kind of successes that we have had to date in terms of bringing together different partners from the medical research community, from industry, from research centres such as TRIUMF and others to work together to find those solutions.

Natural Resources committee  In the first instance, some of the money was going to some of the research infrastructure, to pay for the cyclotron and the accelerators, but basically there has been very little overhead money here. The money has been largely allocated to the partners. Each of the proposals has come in with different partners, again, from academia, from the research community, from industry.

Natural Resources committee  As members will appreciate, earth observation essentially is a growing field that can serve a range of public policy purposes and, indeed, a range of private sector purposes as well. It is important in that context both to have the devices in space to signal back to the earth and to have the receiving stations on the ground, in order to be able to capture the images from the satellites, process them, and make them available to the users.

Natural Resources committee  Essentially, the funding is there to allow the nuclear laboratories to conduct their work, in terms of the production of medical isotopes, the management of the site at Chalk River, and the conduct of research that is taking place at that site. This is largely in line with the requirements that were set out by AECL at the beginning of the year.

Natural Resources committee  I will do that gladly. You may recall in budget 2010 the government provided an investment of $35 million over two years to try to develop non-reactor-based sources of medical isotopes for Canadians. That funding supported four projects: two cyclotron and two linear accelerator projects.

Natural Resources committee  Chairman, members of the committee, I welcome your invitation to present Supplementary Estimates (B) for 2012-13 for Natural Resources Canada. I will keep my remarks brief and would be pleased to respond to any questions that you may have. As members are aware, Natural Resources Canada outlined 2012-13 expenditures of just over $2.85 billion in the main estimates presented earlier this year.