Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I thank the witnesses for making another trip back here to see us. We're sorry we didn't get to hear you the last time, but we're certainly glad that we're getting to hear you today.
We probably all have heard about the IJC, but I'm not so sure we know a whole lot about it. We hear about it. We hear about the work. Joe, we hear about things that you're doing and announcing. We appreciate the fact that you keep us up to date on your announcements and so on.
I think it's good to hear directly from you. I'm interested in—I don't know if you're calling it a pilot project—the development of the rapid response plan for the St. Clair River and Detroit River area in particular. Do you look on that as a pilot project? Okay.
I'm certainly interested in that area, since it's right in my backyard. Definitely, a tremendous number of jurisdictions play a role there. There have been a lot of meetings and discussions over the past number of years with different organizations on both sides. I've taken part in some of those discussions as we've gone back and forth in national meetings and so on. Is the cooperation good with the IJC when it comes to trying to set up this? Could you talk a bit about that?
You said that you received $143,000 from the U.S. Great Lakes restoration initiative funding, but there was money, $17.5 million, announced last week on the Canadian side, on the four key activities for prevention, early warning, rapid response, and management and control. Do you have any sense whether the IJC is going to get funding from this? Could you talk about that, please?