Thank you for the question.
Previously, a significant component of the department's funding was up for renewal every period of years. Budget 2010 puts an end to that cycle by proposing that funding be added permanently to the reference levels of the department. In the future, we won't see the same drop-off related to that key component of our funding.
One of the other big changes--and it's probably the most significant one in terms of where the dollars go--relates to the treatment of infrastructure funding. There was a time when infrastructure funding was voted by Parliament in the vote on Western Diversification. There was a decision made at some point in the past to actually attach that more directly to Infrastructure Canada, which administers the program. So in many cases the same amount of dollars was simply reported under a different heading, and not under Western Diversification any more.
If you look at the core funding for the core activities we do--we don't call infrastructure one of our core activities--the issues the minister spoke to around science and technology, innovation, and competitiveness are what we call our core activities. That funding has either remained stable or, in some cases, been made permanent. That is a significant advantage for us, because we can plan with our partners much more effectively than we could in the past.