Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Essentially, this budget is for the study of the oil sands and will allow us to cover the costs of witnesses, because I anticipated that we'd be hearing a lot of witnesses from western Canada. As you'll see, I budgeted for ten witnesses from Calgary and Edmonton and four from unspecified locations. That doesn't tie us to inviting the witnesses from those particular areas; it simply allows us to have a budget for this particular study, so when witnesses make requests to be reimbursed we don't have to go into the operating budget of the committee. I made it so that we're still under the $40,000 ceiling in order that the chair would not have to appear before liaison, because that's under the mandate; the committee is allowed to approve a budget up to $40,000. If we exceed that budget in this study, the chair will have to go and defend however much more we need before liaison, but for the time being this would cover us for a good part of the study, if not the entire study.