Thank you, Mr. Chair and Mr. Kamp.
I'm struck just by the way I manage these kinds of questions. A comment was made earlier when the question was put about who should be scrutinizing these things. In fact I always look at all of the expenses of a department--and I've done this my whole career--by what my mother would say. My mother raised four teenagers on a secretary's salary, so she's very conscious...and I see her as my little focus group as a taxpayer.
I do have that kind of careful scrutiny of what we do with taxpayer dollars, and I really believe there needs to be a benefit to Canadians, as does the minister, absolutely.
The process is that each of the sectors.... Mr. Bevan has the fisheries and aquaculture sector within which there's an international group, and it's the same on our policy side, where the policy work is done internationally, led by Ms. Huard. They will plan out the year to the best of their ability with the meetings that we know are coming. That is not just done from a financial perspective but a workload and work planning perspective, to make sure there are enough people in Ottawa and people who are actually working to priority. There is nobody who likes to spend money for the sake of spending money, and there's actually nobody who likes to travel for the sake of travelling--having done a significant amount of travel in my own career, I know it's physically exhausting and it's not fun. It may look like it's fun, but it's no fun. So we try to minimize it in fact to the best of our ability.
Within the department, the science ADM will look at her budget and her travel requirements for her folks to go to international conferences on science and other things. The ADMs then make those kinds of decisions for their sector within the budgets they have been allocated. Then they review against that, and it always needs to be against the priorities and what is the best value for the department and therefore for Canadians.