Canadian Heritage Committee on June 10th, 2010

[Richard Dicerni]

I am going to ask my colleagues to do a count. A lot of projects that were funded last year are not being funded this year. In addition, a number of them that were not funded the first year were funded the next year.

[Royal Galipeau, Conservative, Ottawa—Orléans, ON]

There are more of the latter, I assume.

[Richard Dicerni]

Yes, because...

[Royal Galipeau, Conservative, Ottawa—Orléans, ON]

But they are receiving smaller amounts, since the total amount is lower, is that right?

[Richard Dicerni]

That is correct, in part. However, the average is the same, about $1 million. If we count the projects...

[Marie-Josée Thivierge]

There are 47, for a total of about $39 million.

[Richard Dicerni]

That's about right.

[Royal Galipeau, Conservative, Ottawa—Orléans, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Ms. Dhalla and Mr. Simms, you're splitting some time here, I think.

[Ruby Dhalla, Liberal, Brampton—Springdale, ON]

Thank you very much for coming.

I want to pick up on a point that my colleague had raised. In terms of the minister's approval, a review of applications, how many applications does he personally take a look at?

[Richard Dicerni]

Those that we had scrubbed, that we had identified as being eligible both in terms of project eligibility as well as the activities within those projects.

[Ruby Dhalla, Liberal, Brampton—Springdale, ON]

So how many projects would that be?

[Richard Dicerni]

This year it worked out to, I believe, 88.

[Ruby Dhalla, Liberal, Brampton—Springdale, ON]

Eighty-eight projects. Now when he is given those 88 projects, given all the expertise and so forth in the department, are suggestions made by anyone else on that list of 88 projects as to whether or not they should or should not be approved?

[Richard Dicerni]

With this program this year, we took the same approach as we had with the other economic action plan program in the department, which was the knowledge infrastructure program, where we scrubbed, we analyzed, and then presented these projects to ministers as being worthy of consideration.

[Ruby Dhalla, Liberal, Brampton—Springdale, ON]

So all 88 projects are worthy of consideration.

[Richard Dicerni]

Yes.

[Ruby Dhalla, Liberal, Brampton—Springdale, ON]

Out of the 88 projects, what is the percentage that the minister approves?

[Richard Dicerni]

This year, 47 projects.

[Ruby Dhalla, Liberal, Brampton—Springdale, ON]

So the other remaining projects—

[Richard Dicerni]

They were not approved.

[Ruby Dhalla, Liberal, Brampton—Springdale, ON]

—were not approved. Does the minister provide an explanation as to why those other projects are not approved?

[Richard Dicerni]

As was the case with some of the other economic action plan programs and initiatives, some were accepted and some were not. Given that there were many more projects requesting much more money than was available, those were the 47 projects deemed to be worthy of government support.

[Ruby Dhalla, Liberal, Brampton—Springdale, ON]

So 41 projects, almost 50% of the projects that were put forward to the minister, were not approved.

[Richard Dicerni]

That's correct.