The funding proposal is an “up to” amount that would be available for the debates commissioner to use. We have a general idea of what that dollar value is. You saw the amount in the budget this year. I can say that the intent would be for around $5 million next year. That coincides a bit with part of your first question, which was around how we are going to spend the money. The money that's set aside is for a very small fraction of the year. When you can extrapolate that out, it makes sense that it's a smaller amount this year and a larger amount next year, as we go into an election season.
We are setting that up behind the scenes. There is no input whatsoever from any nominee on how we actually set it up. However, once that money is made available, they will have complete independence to spend that money as they see fit.
However, I think the nominee spoke at a parliamentary committee this week and explained generally that it's going to be salaries and contracting and communications and those engagement types of roles if he is the debates commissioner.