Thank you.
Mr. Chair, hopefully I'll be able to keep myself to vote 1c, as you have suggested, but then I am the new guy, so we'll see what we can do.
Thank you, Minister, for being here.
Let me actually go to vote 1c and talk about an amount of money that went unused--$60,830--and is being returned from Environment Canada to the Department of National Defence as “unused funds for investments in search and rescue coordination initiatives across Canada”.
As you know and are fully aware of, Minister, this committee did undertake a study of search and rescue response times. We do know that search and rescue activities are delivered by a number of different departments. Clearly there is a multitude of folks involved, and we appreciate all of the hard work they do, but ultimately the responsibility does stop with the department.
So in view of the facts of what we've seen, especially on our coasts, when it comes to search and rescue, and the nature of that study, I guess there are three questions that come from the fact that this money went unused. What was the intent for this money that had been transferred to Environment Canada in the first place? Why wasn't the full amount used? How much of the money they received was actually used in the first place? If you could address those questions, I'd appreciate it.