Thank you, Chair.
My concern is that I'm not sure how useful this whole process is going to be. I don't think it will be useful at all, in fact, and it's redundant.
For example, this committee doesn't meet every week, and it certainly doesn't meet every week throughout the summer. I'm trying to understand the benefits and the logistics of how this would work and the benefit to the people of Canada if committee members who are doing other work throughout the summer, or travelling with parliamentary committees, are going to get an e-mail that lists a bunch of projects that have been approved. Probably many of them are going to be announced with press releases anyway.
With a word to redundancy, here's supplementary estimates (A) 2009-10, just published today, which lists allocations for Treasury Board central votes. There are pages and pages of exactly those kinds of expenses.
For example, under “Department, Agency, or Crown Corporation”, Environment--Parks Canada Agency is allocated $9.9 million; Trans-Canada Highway twinning through Banff National Park is allocated $2.1 million; and under Health Department, health facilities and capital programs are allocated $10 million.
So this is a totally redundant effort. I view it as a partisan effort and totally redundant. I don't think logistically it provides any benefit to the people of Canada.
Thank you.