Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I thank you, Ms. Fraser, as well as those accompanying you for being here with us today. I would also like to thank the departmental and organizational representatives.
I will begin with something that you mentioned, Ms. Fraser. It concerns the implementation, the signing of agreements. I am looking at your comments and I find that they are quite alarming. We see that some agreements are signed at the end of the agreement period or smack in the middle of the fiscal year, when we would expect that the organizations that had tabled the applications should be in a position to carry out their projects, to implement things for people, in this case in the north. But they are not able to know in advance what will happen to them. Currently, this would seem to be a trend within the government. We have seen this phenomenon elsewhere, for example in the case of Official Languages Support Programs. Today, we see that this is also affecting assistance programs for the Canadian north.
We can only ask if the government's objective is to offer the least possible while giving the impression of offering a great deal. Agreements are signed after six months, and the implication is that certain communities will be short of money because they will be short of time. In the end, it will be the citizens of those regions who will have to pay the price, because they will not be able to take advantage of specific support programs.
Do you agree?