Just so everybody is apprised of how this works, what happens is there's a global budget for all the committees, and if memory serves me correctly, it's around $5 million, $4.5 million, in that area. What happens is it's a very restricted budget, in the sense that it's allowed with regard to our clerk, our researcher, beverages we have provided to us for committee meetings, the odd meals, and travel expenses for witnesses, etc. That's all standard, and you have to do a lot to initiate that. We do that at the beginning when we establish the committees.
Then when you want to travel you always go before Liaison, and that's where you have the chairs of all the various committees sit down and in a sense peer review and decide whether or not they're going to give you the money. That collective group of all the chairs holds that bag of around $5 million and they determine whether the travel is a go or not. I'm not going to cast any partisan aspersions, but in some years that money is spent pretty much right to the max, and there are other years--and this would be one of those times--when it's not.
There's not as much travel in this particular session as there has been sometimes in the past. That probably has more to do with a minority government as opposed to a majority government. As you can well imagine, it's easier to travel in a majority government than in a minority government. We all know that all too well.