Agriculture committee  As Ms. Namiesniowski explained, for the cost-shared programs, the provinces are required to be accountable. Since they provide the funding, an evaluation is carried out every year for all those who receive funding in the provinces. Audits are conducted locally, with the provinces

Agriculture committee  To add clarification, for the funding that has been put in place, there's a formula all the provinces have agreed to, so every province receives its fair share. It's usually based on the science of the agriculture industry in the respective provinces.

Agriculture committee  Yes, that's the heart of that negotiation, in fact.

Agriculture committee  The Treasury Board has a policy that indicates that all programs of all departments must be evaluated once every five years. Our department has undertaken this process so that the next policy framework is developed according to that evaluation. If sectors had success, we build on

Agriculture committee  I would like to add something for the new members of the committee. In many cases, statutory programs are not discussed in detail. The funds are not subject to votes. For instance, in the list of the supplementary estimates, we see an amount of $1.3 billion. That explains why th

Agriculture committee  This total is a summary of money from every single province and territory. I don't have that breakdown with me, but each province has a maximum of 25%, and we have to make sure that at the end of the five years the money has been spent. It may vary between provinces, but this is

Agriculture committee  For the vast majority of those revenues, I'll use the example of our research centre in Quebec. It's at Saint-Hyacinthe and it's a food research centre. A lot of private sector industries use our facilities to develop different types of products. They rent our space at market val

Agriculture committee  I'll try to explain the difference between the two sets of money, and I'll leave the experts to talk about the sector. In Growing Forward 2 there are voted programs. We have talked about innovation and competitiveness, and all of that. In that programming, for every dollar that'

Agriculture committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the opportunity to open this discussion around the supplementary estimates (C) for Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada for 2015-2016. This afternoon, I am joined by my colleague Tina Namiesniowski, Assistant Deputy Minister, Programs Branch, for w

Agriculture committee  Yes. In the main estimates, the total before you, which has to be voted on, is about $943 million. Of that amount, the envelope for Growing Forward 2 is about $450 million, or about 48% of the budget that has to be voted on here. You can see some parts of it in more detail on pag

Agriculture committee  In terms of the numbers, as we mentioned before when we were here as part of the deficit reduction action plan, the department announced a significant reduction in its population of employees, and the numbers you are quoting are correct. In the draft, we had announced a reduction

Agriculture committee  Again, I'll start with the numbers and then.... From a financial angle, you'll see that interest rates were lower and there were fewer disasters last year. Obviously the program is there if there's a need but obviously last year there wasn't a need. That's why you'll see the expe

Agriculture committee  I'll begin, as CPMA is a separate operating agency reporting to the department. So just to clarify this, in fact the agency doesn't draw any money from the government. Basically it taxes 0.8% of any bets made in Canada. It's basically self-funded by the industry so it doesn't dra

Agriculture committee  I'll deal with the financial aspect of this, and my colleague will discuss the programming side. You're correct. If you look at the main estimates, last year at the same time it was $1.295 billion, and currently it's $1.291 billion for the BRM elements of our program in the dep

Agriculture committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Basically, the estimates that are produced, which are in front of you today, are the authority received to date at a point in time. That normally is around early January. There is a cut-off date that is imposed by Treasury Board and any subsequent approval