Again, there were a number of points made before you got to the end question.
One fact that might be of interest, Mr. Savage, regarding your comment about how that would be two jobs instead of one job in my riding is that one of the challenges in terms of our being able to come and give you the kind of information you're looking for at this point is that we're comparing to a program last year that was completed. I can look at last year and tell you what happened, because we have the data from the end of the summer. We're in the process of rolling this out, so I am going to try, to the best of my ability, to answer your question.
As I was saying in response to the earlier question, what we did is what we would normally do in a program. We would allocate up to the budget, in terms of the first round of funding decisions, against the criteria that were put in place for this program. So up to $77.3 million for the not-for-profit sector was allocated on the same basis as was in place last year by province and by territory, and for the public and private sector the remaining $8.6 million.
But as we go through, then, and speak to the employers, and they come back to us and say no, they're not actually going to use that many positions and so on, we then have an opportunity to commit additional dollars. As well, it is the case that when we make a commitment at the beginning of the year, in May, for instance, by the time the end of the summer rolls around we know that we won't have spent the full budget, for whatever reason—the student may have left; they weren't able to actually attract the student. So we over-commit the budget in order to ensure that we try to fully spend the budget.
Sorry, I have just one more point, if you'll indulge me.
In the course of last year, I'm told that actually we were making funding commitments continuing into mid-July, which obviously is not preferred, given the fact that we're into the summer and these are positions for students. So that's what I mean that as additional dollars become available we'll go out and make new commitments.