First of all, I want to again thank you for the motion as well as the committee's willingness to do this study. We're looking forward to the recommendations. We want to be open, we want to be transparent, and we want to work with other colleagues to improve where improvements need to be made.
On the bilateral agreements, I want to assure everyone that whenever we get an application for an assessment of a project, we don't hold that project back because we don't have a signed bilateral agreement. To be very clear, we have actually approved projects prior to signing a bilateral agreement, based on the needs of our provincial and municipal partners. Rest assured: no project will be held back as long as our partners are ready to advance those projects.
We had an aspirational date of March 31 for us to be ready to sign bilateral agreements, and we are ready. We have been ready for the last number of months. The issue is just one of timing. As you can appreciate, a number of provinces have gone through their budget processes, and one province in particular has gone through a leadership change. We want to give them time so that they're ready to sign those bilateral agreements. From a federal perspective, we're ready whenever they're ready, but we respect their timeline and we want to make sure that they are ready to sign as well.