Public Accounts committee  All of our infrastructure programs are done through contribution agreements. An agreement is signed between the Government of Canada—in this case Minister Baird—and the recipient, in these cases the various towns, municipalities, and, in one case, the Province of Ontario. The ag

Public Accounts committee  Yes, that's correct. We do not provide money in advance. We only reimburse costs incurred, so as the towns build their project, they submit claims to the department. We review the claims carefully to make sure all the costs are eligible according to the terms and conditions of th

Public Accounts committee  I'm John Forster, Associate Deputy Minister, infrastructure.

Public Accounts committee  Yes, in the end the fund was approved for $50 million; about $45.7 million was approved for projects, and the final expenditures were $44.8 million. All bills and claims have been paid out and verified with reports.

Transport committee  To be honest, I'm not familiar with the specifics. As you know, in the north our Building Canada money flows through an agreement with the territories whereby they propose projects to us. But I'm happy to--

Transport committee  I'm happy to look into it and get back to you. I'm not familiar with it.

Transport committee  The item in the supplementary estimates (C) in terms of the reduction in the green infrastructure fund is just a re-profiling from this fiscal year to future fiscal years, to match the rate of construction and the rate at which the provinces are building the projects.

Transport committee  Right. Exactly.

Public Accounts committee  No, I think that's a reasonably good assessment. But as I said, it varies across the country. Our general sense at the moment, depending on the data we get, is around 3% to 5%, so the vast majority of projects will come in by the program deadline. Each one has some different reas

Public Accounts committee  That's a very good observation. As for what we did as part of our streamlining to accelerate...normally for a contribution program you'd wait until you signed a contribution agreement. By and large for almost all the projects, our money flowed through the provinces, which then di

Public Accounts committee  Sorry, could you repeat the last part of the question?

Public Accounts committee  For the first part of your question, the documents we've just recently received from the minister in Quebec give us an update on the status of their projects, so we're in the process of analyzing that information. We'd be happy to talk to the Government of Quebec just to make sur

Public Accounts committee  I don't know right now. I don't have the detailed data for each project. However, there are two types of funds. There is the Infrastructure Stimulus Fund, with a deadline of March 2011, and there are regular programs, like the Building Canada Fund, which is a seven-year program,

Public Accounts committee  Yes. What we're finding generally across the country is that the vast, vast majority of projects will finish on time for the deadline. The data does come in regularly, so right now we're looking at about 3% to 5% of the projects that we have put at risk of not being completed by

Public Accounts committee  It would be roughly a little over 100 projects, though I would caution that we just got some recent data from Quebec for the first time--sort of detailed project data that we're analyzing.