Thank you to the officials for coming today.
I think there is some difficulty in your position only because the experience we've had with respect to the government's plans on climate change spending is that the spending announcements have rarely added up to what's actually gone out the door. This is not me saying this; it is the Auditor General of Canada. Whereas previous governments have claimed as much as $5 billion to $5.5 billion spent publicly, when we go through the books and audit it, the previous government had a record of spending a little less than $2 billion; $1.7 billion was one of the figures proposed. So you can understand not just the anxiety but the frustration in trying to ascertain what is being spent so that Canadians can feel some sense of assurance as to what the government is saying it is doing is what is happening.
I would like to focus for a moment on the ecoTrust initiative. Are there contracts with the provinces? Is there a formal document between the federal government and each of the provinces as to what is meant to be done with the money?