Thank you.
I realize I'm not a regular on this committee and I'm substituting for someone today. Just by listening to Mr. Martin, I have to put on the record that I find it somewhat unfair that if the committee is going to call for a specific reallocation to support this program and then just say, well, take the money from anywhere, I think for the members who are very much in favour of this, if they do look for a reallocation of money, they should suggest specifics of where they would want the money to come from, or they should word the motion to state that if there are funds left over, not allocated, etc, within the envelope.... It's just irresponsible to state that they'll find the money somewhere, after saying go out there and find it.
If you're going to specifically call for new measures, new spending or a reallocation of spending, which I guess is what's being said here, we don't know what the unknown reaction is going to be. The assumption is there are funding envelopes that aren't going to be fully utilized. We don't know that for sure. It's been talked about, how hard the economy is, and the demands on government and so forth. If that's true, it is possible that all the funding envelopes from all the other programming done in this area might be fully utilized as well.
If that's true, then what we're doing is essentially saying something has to be cut, and we're calling for a cut, but we just don't know where.
I think if members are going to present this, they should be very specific and clear as to what they're looking for and provide some detailed guidance.