Government Operations committee  There seems to be some confusion here about projects versus programs.

Government Operations committee  First and foremost, in order to fund a project, you need to have the program approved. The role of the board, first and foremost, following this economic statement, is to ensure that all the appropriate programming is approved. That's what we're doing now, and that's largely what

Government Operations committee  A ceiling was in effect at the time. I don't think we could do it, even if we wanted to.

Government Operations committee  Could you repeat the question?

Government Operations committee  Again, it's the government that makes the decision on how they want to report to Parliament and to Canadians. I think the government has declared in terms of the vote 35 how they will do that, which is they will report through their quarterly reporting, and of course the first re

Government Operations committee  Again, Mr. Chair, I think the government has made its decision on how it's going to report. And what I've said was that at any time following the issue of that report we'd be prepared to come and talk about how the funding is being allocated.

Government Operations committee  Allocated.

Government Operations committee  The expectation is that a large share of that will be spent between April 1 and June. That's why we've said that it is a bridge funding mechanism. However, you can never predict in any one program area that what you forecast in April will actually always be done by the end of Jun

Government Operations committee  Treasury Board is the management board for the Government of Canada. It sets out what we call polices, directives, and standards. That's the set of rules, if you will, with which departments must comply to spend, to procure, to contract, to purchase IT. Whatever it is, there are

Government Operations committee  I think the government has declared how they will report on this, which is they're going to report quarterly, report through the estimates process, so we basically will follow the direction that's provided by the government in following up. I'm quite prepared, once that report ha

Government Operations committee  I think what the minister said today was that he and the Minister of Finance consulted with the Auditor General on the economic stimulus package and the measures that we were going to take to speed up the process. I was at that meeting. We went through, with the Auditor General

Government Operations committee  Yes, I was.

Government Operations committee  No. This was to make her aware of the various measures that we were taking. She listened. That was the purpose of the meeting.

Government Operations committee  As a first step, every initiative outlined in the budget requires either policy approval through the cabinet system, or some of them, as the minister noted, could be extensions or top-ups to existing programming, which don't require additional policy approval and would come direc

Government Operations committee  Mr. Chair, I didn't think there was a question there. I think there was a statement by the honourable member.