My name is Niall O'Dea, and I am the assistant deputy minister of the Canadian wildlife service.
The expenditure is certainly tied to our 2018 investment of $1.3 billion and will help us make great strides in our efforts to protect biodiversity all over the country.
As far as species at risk go, we are seeing significant progress in the protection of priority species such as caribou. We have seven conservation agreements with our provincial counterparts and three with our first nations partners. We have agreements covering 11 priority places in the country, and we are seeing major progress thanks to collaborative planning to protect species at risk in urban interface zones.
We have also seen considerable improvement when it comes to protected areas. We are aiming to have 16.6% of our land mass protected by 2023, in co-operation with first nations, the provinces and territories, and other partners. That is equivalent to increasing protected areas by three Nova Scotias—