Thank you, Chair.
Thank you, Minister and officials.
I want to draw my question from pages 170 through 181 of the supplementary estimates. I have some specific questions.
In passing, though, I can't help but give a bit of a remark back to you, Minister, that the government has been in power close to five years. To blame everything on the Liberal-dominated Senate...oh, wait a minute, that's not the case anymore. Or there's the changing of short titles that go way beyond the actual reach and even the effect of legislation that is a little mysterious and a little hyperbolic.
But let's not get caught up in political debate. Let's get down to the figures. You've been in office five years. You are now starting to appropriate money for some of your grand visions.
If you look at page 180, I appreciate, as a preface to the specific questions on expenses, that you had a separate allocation from the Treasury Board with respect to a campaign regarding victims of crime. I appreciate that it is separate, but within these figures can you tell me specifically with regard to the third item, “Funding to support victim services...to increase national support for missing persons investigations” and for the item two lines down, “Funding for increased support for victims of crime...for the creation and enhancement of the Child Advocacy Centres” that you refer to--those two sums are $2.5 million and $1.3 million--whether any of those sums allocated or appropriated are for advertising, for publicity, for promotion? That would be one question.
The second question, because I want to give you a lot of time to answer, Minister and Deputy Minister, is that I've been at Canadian Bar Association meetings at which you've made it very clear that transfers to provinces regarding legal aid are just that--transfers to provinces. Almost across the country, your fallback position is that you can do nothing with what provinces do with their allocation generally with respect to ensuring there's adequate legal aid in the provinces.
I think that's a constitutionally sound argument, Mr. Minister, but in this item under transfers, if I understand it correctly, you have transferred or taken a transfer of $2 million “to provide immigration and refugee legal aid funding for provinces and territories”. It seems to be exactly what you say that you do not do as a government, which is to transfer money directly to provinces for specific legal aid services.
I wonder if that's a breakthrough. I wonder if it's a good thing. I wonder if it's something that you're mandated to do as government under Citizenship and Immigration. I just wonder what it is, why it's such a large sum and, finally, why it's being transferred from Citizenship and Immigration. Did they do it before and cover it in their budget? Did they not do it before? Is this something new?
Those are three general expenditure questions, Minister.