Transport committee  Could I just add one quick point to Bryce's answer? Also remember that under the stimulus fund, if we got an application that required a significant federal environmental assessment, we wouldn't approve it under the program because it would take too long and would not be constru

Transport committee  Where we are required to do a federal environmental assessment, i.e., it wasn't exempted under the regulations, we would have followed the environmental act and the law and the process. So we would have done—

Transport committee  It depends very much on the nature of the project. If it's a very minor work, such as a street repaving, it would be exempted under the regulations. If you're doing a larger project, such as twinning a highway or building a brand-new subway line in Toronto, etc., you would go thr

Transport committee  It depends on the nature of the—

Transport committee  Maybe I'll just add to that and respond to your question. The regulations said for certain kinds of projects you're not going to need to do a separate federal environmental assessment. If you're repaving an existing road in downtown Edmonton, the regulations said you're not goin

Transport committee  No. The regulations talk about the “kinds” of projects. It covers, sir, all of the programs, but it's specific to these kinds of projects where we have demonstrated in the past there are very small or non-existent environmental impacts. We're exempting those.

Transport committee  I'll ask Bryce to respond to your question.

Transport committee  First of all, let me say that Quebec has been a very good partner with us in rolling out this stimulus program, as have all the provinces and the municipalities. As the minister indicated this morning, we have some information on the status of projects in Quebec, but it's not a c

Transport committee  We've worked very closely with the Parliamentary Budget Officer in providing him with data and information. The report on which that number is based was using data as of the end of March 31. He was using data from last year and didn't capture any of the huge--as you know, if you

Transport committee  There are a number of options on how you could do it. We have received suggestions from provinces that should the government wish to extend it, you could.

Transport committee  There was a letter provided by the Premier of Manitoba on behalf of provinces, all of them, following the last meeting of the Council of the Federation, requesting the federal government to consider extending the deadline, which the government is doing. In there they've suggested

Transport committee  We are working with several Quebec ministries. My counterpart in Quebec is the Assistant Deputy Minister of Finance for Quebec. We are also working with several ministries, such as the Ministry of Municipal Affairs, Regions and Land Occupancy of Quebec, the Quebec Ministry of Tra

Transport committee  Maybe I'll start and then Daniel can add to it. The government is obviously very interested in jobs and the impacts of the economic action plan. As the minister indicated this morning, the plan is much more than just infrastructure. There are tax credits. There are training prog

Transport committee  I think the minister presented the government's view on the deadline. The original program was for a two-year period. The stimulus was to be temporary and targeted. We think the deadline was very important, to make sure that projects actually got built in that timeframe. In some

Transport committee  Since the EAP was announced in Budget 2009 in January, we've approved 6,230 projects. The total value of that is $30.4 billion. That's under both stimulus programs, the two-year...plus a key part of the action plan was to accelerate the Building Canada fund and get it moving fast