Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, everybody, for being here.
One aspect of the budget involves projected asset sales. It involves projected numbers for a combination of savings from departmental spending review as well as asset sales. In another committee yesterday we were given splits of the amounts, so it's a little over $10 billion over five years. By far the majority of that $10 billion is expected to come from the sale of assets. It's not clear at all what kind of assets. In fact it was confirmed yesterday by the department using words like 'hypothetical'.
We were told we were not likely to get a list of assets until at least the summer. We raised concerns about making a commitment to revenue on the sale of assets that have not yet been identified, the challenge of determining how you could arrive at that number--in particular, a commitment then to sell assets at an economic time we're facing now when the value of those assets may be significantly reduced. We clearly have some concerns. I'm just wondering if you can comment a little bit on the validity of the budget including those kinds of numbers and any concerns you might have.