Thank you, Madam Chair.
A particular thank you to our repeat guests for their additional time.
Thank you for the presentation. I hope to get to this in subsequent questions--it depends on how much time I have--but I will just suggest that we have a continuing concern with relying on models as opposed to facts. These are uncommon times, and we have been focused on looking for actual numbers. We know that in some departments, we and other committees have been able to receive actual job numbers by project. That is something we still seem to be lacking. So I appreciate that the approach here is one of a model base, but I'm not so sure we're completely comfortable that this is the only one we're using.
I want to address a couple of issues we had from our last committee.
I want to thank you, Madam Baltacioglu, for having provided the agreement between the federal government and, in this case, Ontario.
We had been speaking about the need for information on job creation and progress reports. In the last committee meeting, there was a significant effort to suggest that somehow the federal government was not entitled to the information that the province, in this case Ontario, had requested from municipalities for the infrastructure stimulus program.
I just want to read a little bit from the Canada-Ontario agreement:
8. ROLE OF ONTARIO Ontario warrants and commits to:
a) monitor the progress of the Projects;
So there's a positive obligation to monitor progress on the part of the province.
Section 9 specifically refers to progress reports:
9. ACCOUNTABILITY 9.1. Progress Reports
Ontario shall provide Canada with quarterly Progress Reports, commencing on August 30, 2009, (in accordance with the 2009 Budget Implementation Act and subsequent requirements) detailing progress on Implementation of the Projects:
It actually talks about amounts allocated; it talks about amounts received from Canada; it talks about amounts expended on the projects that have been detailed; and it also requires information on projects started and substantially completed.
I note that we have also spent a significant amount of time asking for information on amounts actually expended.
As my first question, has a progress report been received by Ontario--on August 30, I would have thought--and if so, can we get a copy?