Thank you for being here.
As you surely know, the provision is copied and pasted from Bill C-43, An Act respecting a payment to be made out of the Consolidated Revenue Fund to support a pan-Canadian artificial intelligence strategy. My question isn't necessarily to determine why you decided to include it in Bill C-44, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 22, 2017 and other measures, but rather why you have chosen the legislative approach rather than a budgetary one, which is the regular and fastest way.
If the government believed that it was a priority to adopt this $125 million allocation, and if it had been included in the main estimates, the allocation would have already been adopted.
You're asking this committee to adopt this part of the bill, even though it could have been done in some other way. What motivated your decision to use the legislative process?