Absolutely. First of all, on the actual money spent, the expenditures, as we say in our departmental performance report--I believe on page 23--we identify that this is probably not the best measure of economic activity in all infrastructure programs, either current programs or past programs, because in infrastructure, project activity, like economic activity, starts the moment the project is announced. So contracts are given out, supplies are given, and construction happens, and the federal government pays only after we get bills from our partners. When the provinces send us the bills, we pay them.
You will find this interesting. Right now, in the infrastructure stimulus fund alone, we're sitting with 1,300 projects that either have been completed or are under way in a significant way, and we have not even one bill from our partners. So it's a bit of a delay issue.
Now what is very important--and the Auditor General may want to comment on this--is that this was a very deliberate action for us: we will pay the bills once they come in, and we pay them within 30 days, but this was part of our risk management framework. The Auditor General said that we had balanced our accountabilities, because we want to make sure the payments go to projects that are actually on the ground, and where nothing went wrong with them, etc.
So there is always a delay. We can give you historical data of all our programs between the start to when the payments are. Economic activity happens in between.