Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
Thank you very much, everybody, for being here and taking the time to be with us this afternoon.
Mr. Page, from listening to your comments and reading the report, I think you are being appropriately diplomatic in suggesting that more detail on larger, high-risk programs would be good, with perhaps less information on smaller, lower-risk initiatives. However, I'd like to read from a recent article by Jim Travers of The Toronto Star, where he talks about your trying to winkle sense out of the most recent Conservative stimulus report:
Along with noting the critical absence of key data on how billions are being spent and what they are, or are not, achieving, the Parliamentary budget officer points a frustrated finger at the federal practice of creating confusion by changing programs names, definitions, and purposes.
Obviously he's being a little more blunt than you are.
I have two parts to this question. You have indicated frustration in the past due to sheer lack of information. I can assure you that we share that frustration in this committee. For several months now, we have been asking for detailed numbers on infrastructure spending, even before the stimulus package was proposed, because of earlier concerns about the Building Canada fund and money not being spent. I hope to ask a little more about that later.
In your efforts that have been challenged to just get information, what reasons are given for not providing that information? Can you comment a little on this changing of names and changing of departments? We've certainly seen the same thing in the estimates and found it extremely hard to track. If you can comment on that as well, it would be very much appreciated.