Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Minister.
This is a little unfortunate for you. The Department of Natural Resources is not one of the government's priorities. They prefer to invest in prisons rather than natural resources, since your funding has been cut by 20%. You may have good ideas, but ultimately, we look at the figures and we see reductions in this case of $928 million. You are having to deal with cuts of $235.9 million in operating costs. Grants of $457 million are being eliminated because they no longer believe in renovations, and $235.6 million in contributions. We are going to review this together. We are also going to talk about Atomic Energy Canada.
We get the feeling that the process is dragging on somewhat at present. The Ontario government is prepared to buy Atomic Energy Canada. You have one genuine buyer, the SNC-Lavalin Group and the Ontario Municipal Employees' Retirement System, which are bidding for the project jointly.
You are having problems with Argentina because your Department seems to have received a very clear message from its representatives, who are not very happy. Are you satisfied with the way the tendering process is working at present? Why can the Ontario government not buy it?
Also, why is this dragging on so long?