Agriculture committee  Thank you very much for the question. The $11 million for food safety stems from the budget of 2011, which gave us $100 million overall over a five-year time horizon to make a number of investments in strengthening food safety. These range from renovating our labs and buying new

Agriculture committee  Thank you very much for the question, Chair. Specifically, Agriculture and Agri-Food provides us funding for certain initiatives. At the completion of the initiatives, if we haven't spent the full amount, we return the remainder through the supplementary estimates process. In fa

Agriculture committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I'd be happy to respond to the question, and if we don't complete it, then we'll respond in writing as well. The first point of clarification is that the estimate process is not a forecast; it's an approval by Parliament of authorities to spend up

Agriculture committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. The estimates today reflect the supplementary estimates (A), (B), and (C), and that's the reason for the increase from the $685 million to $728 million.

Agriculture committee  Okay.

Agriculture committee  Mr. Chair, we did provide information to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, and that information is also posted publicly on our website. We have broken down our savings across the various program activities that we have and we have indicated where reductions have occurred. In th

Agriculture committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. To expand on my earlier comments, the fascinating thing about this is that the equipment we are purchasing will allow us to much more rapidly characterize the DNA of food pathogens. Obviously it serves our own program interests, of course, but in the event

Agriculture committee  Perhaps I can answer the question here and I'll turn to my colleagues for details, of course. The analysis responding to the budget, of course, was very detailed. It was well in advance of the budget. We led up to it by looking at all sorts of different proposals and to challeng

Agriculture committee  Oh, I'm sorry. It refers to an executive position: a director, an executive director, a vice-president, etc. There's been reduction of routine administrative functions associated with those other reductions. There's been some streamlining in accounting operations. There have bee

Agriculture committee  That's correct. It's a series of things. We share now a single chief informatics officer, so it's one executive for both departments. We are beginning to merge some of our services, such as the help desk in our Moncton office, and it's not one way, either; that's important. We

Agriculture committee  The $276,000 comes from a program run by National Defence. The intent of the program is to strengthen the infrastructure of governmental and non-governmental partners in science, according to National Defence's priorities. In particular, we've taken this money and we're purchasin

Agriculture committee  I'll expand some on the president's comments. The reduction of $24.3 million is an administrative reduction. It includes a large variety of activities, ranging from very small to some quite a bit larger. There's been a general reduction in EX positions—

Agriculture committee  Thank you. Of the nearly $14 million, about $11 million is related to Shared Services Canada, which was established in August last year. That represents a resource transfer to that agency. In that sense, we still receive the services. It's part of the government's movement to ra