Thank you, Chair.
I want to thank the minister for being here. I found it interesting that for the first 22 minutes there was a lot of bluster, and time was unfortunately wasted on making sure that the only topic, according to the Liberals, was questions on the supplementary estimates, yet there were no questions on that, which is quite ironic.
So here we are, and we thank you for being here, Minister. I was extremely pleased when the budget was introduced on Monday, March 19.
When the Commissioner of the Environment came to speak to the committee we heard that the previous Liberal government had announced $6 billion for the environment but provided funding of only $1.3 billion. So there was a phony announcement of $4.7 billion.
You've provided $4.5 billion in this budget relating to the environment. How does this budget improve on the Liberal plan?