We'll call this meeting to order. I'm sorry for the late start. I was held up in the House.
Before we get going with our presentations and our witnesses, there are a couple of housekeeping matters to take care of that we have to do publicly.
The first is that I received an e-mail from Dean Holman, who appeared on our SARA study. It's regarding the budget of the National Aboriginal Council on Species at Risk, and he has to correct the record. He says:
The current budget is approximately $350,000, which has decreased over time. My apologies in providing a misinformed figure. Thank you.
So that impacts the blues in four different places, in questions from Mr. McGuinty, Ms. Duncan, and Mr. Armstrong, who quoted the number he had given us.
So the numbers are actually.... Mr. McGuinty's statement changes to: “I support your caution, but it's a $350,000 organization...”.
Ms. Linda Duncan's record changes and says “$350,000” in her first statement and questions.
Mr. Scott Armstrong's changes are that the last full-time coordinator for NACOSAR was in “July 2007”--that was the other information that had to be changed--as well as “$350,000” in his comments.
The other thing on the agenda is that we have received a letter from the Minister of Environment saying that he is not available to appear on the main estimates on either May 25 or May 27. I believe that at our last meeting when we talked about the schedule we figured that if we couldn't get the minister we'd do our work on the oil sands and SARA, unless there is a desire to have officials.
Mr. Warawa.