Transport committee  Put the other way around, all communications from members of Parliament need to go to the minister's office, and then the minister directs--

Transport committee  I would add to that, if I may, that there are some projects that for some of the types of reasons I talked about a little earlier, you could give them 10 years extra and they still wouldn't get done. Those are the ones we're seeing drop off the list at this point in time, and it's in the single digits.

Transport committee  Well, there's the Government of Canada general communications policy from Treasury Board and so on. In terms of talking to people about projects, we talk to the proponents all the time. It's just a part of our business. There are well-established policies about who can talk to media and so on about individual projects.

Transport committee  Well, no. There are some very clear guidelines on how public servants interact with elected officials, and we follow those. So it's not the case that every public servant can say whatever they want to every elected official, no. There are some very clear rules about that, and those responsibilities--

Transport committee  One of the absolute principles, when a public servant talks to a member of Parliament rather than the minister, is that it needs to be information that we would share with any parliamentarian. So if we were prepared to do a briefing on the arrival of the RInC program or the CAF program, for example, it would be something we would do for any parliamentarian.

Transport committee  I have never in my life seen a project that took more time and cost less. I'm therefore not convinced that paying for a longer time would decrease the costs. The people, particularly in the RInC program, who have the greatest interest in minimizing costs are generally those who are paying two thirds of the bill.

Transport committee  Nationally, the money was divided on a per capita basis. Western Diversification as a whole got the amount on a per capita basis. Within that, we set a base amount of $10 million per region. Then, additionally, between the two different programs, CAF and RInC, there was an additional $410 million approximately.

Transport committee  In fact, if we look at the ones that we think might not complete at all, they are less than one percent. If you look at those projects that might have some issues around the deadline, even those will probably spend 85% of the proposed money. In the other cases, what it is, quite frankly, is that in cases, for example, in which people said it was going to cost them $100 to do the project, they've come to say that they're done but it only cost them $96.

Transport committee  There were a couple of things. First, it is a very specific program with a very specific set of objectives. That specific set of objectives was to get a very defined range of programs up and running in a defined timeframe. A number of things came together. There was the size of the department: we had more staff that were able to deal with this.

Transport committee  No, and I think the dedication to getting the thing done, as the public policy direction of the government—namely, to get people working in a short period of time, to see projects up and running.... The clarity of the selection criteria was actually very important; things such as what my colleague from Infrastructure Canada said about making sure you could do these things in very short order.

Transport committee  I'm very familiar with four provinces, but I do not know the other six very well in that regard. As far as the Olympic Games are concerned, in fact, they represented a very big challenge for us. People were working on this major project. As a result, the smaller million-dollar projects were not of so much interest to them because there were projects that represented tens or hundreds of millions of dollars.

Transport committee  I'll add something, if I may. I'd say pretty much the same thing that my colleague had to say. I refer to some numbers here. Those are the ones that the proponents tell us, but they don't tell us how many people were employed at the lumber store to sell them the lumber or the other materials to do these things.

Transport committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I'm pleased to be here today to discuss Western Economic Diversification Canada's work at implementing Canada's economic action plan and activities in western Canada over the last 18 months. I am joined today by my colleague, Cathy Matthews, our deputy chief financial officer for the department.

Industry committee  I would say, very quickly, that Western Economic Diversification grants no subsidies to private companies. There therefore is no timeframe.

Industry committee  Yes. If you look at the estimates—I don't have them right in front of me now—while it was in WED's component, it was not in Infrastructure Canada's vote. Of course, you only vote on it once. What got taken out of our vote got put into the Infrastructure Canada vote. There is another piece that's worth mentioning here.