Good morning, Mr. Chairman. It is a great pleasure to be here today.
Given the fact that you have a very full agenda, I will reduce my opening statement to a minimum.
I understand from our discussions with the committee's clerk that the principal interests today are around vote 35 and two aspects of it that relate to Western Economic Diversification. What I would like to say about that, just to keep my comments to a minimum and allow others to question and make their presentations, is that we had a $994,000 amount related to the Canada Business Network. We have spent $766,000 of it and committed over $300,000 further dollars of it; we cash-manage the rest. So that amount is completely spent or committed at this point in time.
The second amount that we had was related to the RInC program. This was an amount of approximately $20 million that was under vote 35. We are now well beyond the stage of authorities. We have consulted with provinces, territories, and municipalities on a number of occasions, have done outreach sessions, and have had the first deadline for applications. We have worked with the applicants in helping develop those and get them on track. We have a whole bunch in now, and at this point in time we expect to be able to make program announcements in the very short-term future. People have been working through this past weekend and this week to complete due diligence on a great many projects that we would hope to see announced in the very short-term future.
If I can leave my opening remarks with that, I'll return to you, Mr. Chair.