Thank you, Chair.
Minister and officials, thank you very much for your presence here. It's important for our committee to have this opportunity to have fulsome discussions. The frankness is very appreciated as well.
I want to split my time between two issues. One is long-term drinking water advisories, and the other is the department itself and your experiences in that aspect.
There are two first nations reserves in the riding of Pontiac: Kitigan Zibi and Barriere Lake. These are two communities with very contrasting profiles, but in particular, Kitigan Zibi has had some major drinking water issues over the course of many years. Early on in our mandate, I was pleased that we could announce approximately $5 million in drinking water infrastructure. That was a big deal, but there's more to go.
With a significant sum of money—$1.8 billion announced in the 2016 budget and you mentioned the additional funding in the most recent budget of $172 million—there's good news in the lump-sum category. However, at the end of the day, this has to hit the ground. Could you give us some specifics on how this gets prioritized, how the work is unfolding, and where you're finding the challenges? I appreciate that there have been some successes, but there's a long way to go. Maybe you can go into that a bit, please.