Government Operations committee  I can put it differently: if there's no money, there will be no evidence, because I can't sign an agreement to create evidence if I don't have the money to back up the authority to sign it.

Government Operations committee  When you get the application, you see how many jobs people are proposing to create. There are two ways of going about this. As I mentioned earlier, Statistics Canada has an internationally recognized model done by statisticians--so it's not done by program people like me but by people who are professionals in the area of statistical analysis and tracking econometric data--who have been able to demonstrate over the years, through practical experience, that infrastructure expenditures of a particular type will be able to produce a particular number of jobs, so that's one way we look at it.

Government Operations committee  No, we received them last Friday. Today is Thursday. We're still going through the 800 applications. Certainly each and every one of them, in order to be accepted, is going to have to tell us exactly how many jobs they propose to create. Our due diligence process will assess whether or not we think they're being accurate, and that's the process we're in right now.

Government Operations committee  Thank you for the question. One of the things about this program is that it is very similar to a number of others that we actually run because we do operate a number of infrastructure programs on a regular basis. Many of the projects that we expect to see applications from, and in fact have seen applications from, are from many of the players we dealt with in the past who are quite familiar with the general approach of the program.

Government Operations committee  Yes, and we made them put that in writing too. On the application form they have to put that information in writing for us. We will assess that to see if we think those are the right numbers. If I can speak a little bit about the communications on this, I think by the end of day on budget day back in January, we were receiving our first calls about how people could get access to this money, and it hasn't let up since then.

Government Operations committee  There are two sides to the coin. On one side, we have the Canada Business centres, which entrepreneurs will continue to visit, as they have been doing, and will continue to do what they do to create employment. We have been very familiar with their activities over the past 15 years or so.

Government Operations committee  Thank you very much for your question. As far as the Canada Business centres are concerned, the program has existed for a long time. It was therefore an issue of adding funding so that they could carry on, something which is all the more important during a recession, because we are well aware of the fact that small- and medium-sized businesses have a lot to do with creating the jobs that we will need in order to stimulate the economy.

Government Operations committee  Absolutely, yes.

Government Operations committee  Good morning, Mr. Chairman. It is a great pleasure to be here today. Given the fact that you have a very full agenda, I will reduce my opening statement to a minimum. I understand from our discussions with the committee's clerk that the principal interests today are around vote 35 and two aspects of it that relate to Western Economic Diversification.