Thank you, Chair.
Welcome to our guests today. It's good to see you all.
I think it's both a good news and bad news story. It's just horrendous to see problems that have existed for 20, 30, 40 years still ongoing.
It reminds me of a few years ago when some of my colleagues were sitting around a table like this in the public accounts committe, and we were dealing with the aboriginal education file. Of course we spent eight or nine billion dollars over a few years and the results were even poorer than they were 20 years prior to that. So needless to say, it's just not acceptable and satisfactory to carry on with the progress that we have made, because it's been very little. However, I am encouraged now today when I see the report that there has been some progress in a number of areas and finally some activity and some action, but of course promises don't pay the bills.
We have some new arrangements that have been made. Perhaps, Mr. Wernick, first, with regard to multi-year funding, there was an obvious recognition that the present one-year funding wasn't doing the job. Of course a lot of the bills were coming in, and by the time the approval process got there--overdrafts, etc.--it was a horrendous story. Why did you not go to multi-year funding before? Why have you now agreed to, and to what extent will this be fully implemented?