Transport committee  With respect to lithium batteries, they can be included in things you carry in your checked baggage, or they could be articles that are put in the cargo hold of an aircraft. It could be both scenarios. The lithium batteries are considered dangerous substances. We are a member of the International Civil Aviation Organization, which is the UN agency that is situated in Montreal.

Transport committee  We are. In some cases, it's previously used land. In effect we had to take out a whole neighbourhood on the south shore. We had to buy all the homes there. They've been torn down, and now the site is being prepared to hand over to the concessionaire for them to construct on. The bridge is built parallel to the existing structure, so it's not as if we could take out the existing bridge and build exactly where it is.

Transport committee  Yes, in effect it's contingency money, so if we don't need it, we won't spend it. It will return to the fiscal framework.

Transport committee  Transport Canada has a capital budget. We own a lot of assets across the country. We own ports, airports, other facilities where we test vehicles, and things like that. Every year we go through a priority-setting process where we look at the needs of our facilities and make sure we are able to maintain those facilities in a safe, environmentally sound way.

Transport committee  The P3 agreement was reached in June 2015, and the winning consortium is already in the process of constructing the bridge project, as we speak. They've torn down one of the old portions of the bridge, and they're building what we call the jetties, the platforms they will use to replace the bridge they've torn down, as well as the replacement bridge for the St.

Transport committee  A portion of that money, $12.5 million, is for capital expenditures that the department is responsible for. When we entered into the contract with the P3 concessionaire, we had already negotiated all the properties that were required for the bridge project. That's a normal process, because governments are in a better position to acquire the lands and clean them up.

Transport committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. I will start and just give you a couple of highlights of what is in the supplementary estimates. I am here representing the portfolio for transport, which includes Transport Canada and Infrastructure Canada, as well as a bundle of crown corporations that report under the Minister of Transport to Parliament.

Transport committee  That amount is actually attributed to the world-class tanker safety system funding. There's a total of almost $60 million of increased funding. Of that, there's about $15 million for operating resources such as the national aerial surveillance program, as well as the increased inspections that you were referring to, and some capital money that is required to equip our aircraft to do this kind of surveillance.