Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman.
This is something that does cause a lot of interrogation: what is our contributions program? Our contributions program is a line item set up by Treasury Board in 2000, and it's for five years. It was renewed in 2005. It is to allow us to run a research grant program. We have been doing that every year since 2004, I believe. We advertise the themes and entertain submissions from people all over Canada and award contracts to a maximum of $50,000 to groups.
Usually it is to universities, research institutes, or different research units across the country, and sometimes citizens groups or business groups have been awarded contracts too, to do some research that we don't have the expertise to do into different aspects of privacy; for example, the use of RFIDs, or consumer rights, or how to develop a privacy policy in business, or what the impact of electronic health records is, and so on.
We put the links to these studies, when they're completed—people aren't paid until they are completed—on our website so that the Canadian public can consult these research documents.