Government Operations committee  Monsieur le président and members of the committee, I am pleased to be here before you today to talk about vote 35 and its implications for the supplementary estimates for 2009-10 for the Department of Human Resources and Skills Development Canada. As you heard, my name is Frank

Government Operations committee  I think Mr. Lindsey articulated it much better than I could. Once the amount is allocated to our department, we have until the end of the year to spend it, and we certainly intend to do that in this fiscal year.

Government Operations committee  That's our intention. With respect to our three measures and job creation and stimulus, I'll start with the largest one, the STTF, the Strategic Training and Transition Fund, which is the biggest one. It's $500 million over two years, $250 million for this year. I'm pleased that

Government Operations committee  Thank you very much for your question, Madam. In designing these three measures, I think we and the government were very conscious of trying to find the right balance between getting the money out quickly, creating jobs, and making sure there's proper planning in place, proper s

Government Operations committee  Thank you sir. Perhaps I could ask my colleague Joanne Lamothe to answer.

Government Operations committee  Thank you for that question. I think if you take the economic action plan as a whole, there's a whole range of measures out there, some that involve directly—

Government Operations committee  HRSDC's primary area was part of the Canada skills and transition strategy, which was essentially $8.3 billion over two years. Yes, we've talked here about vote 35 and to get the appropriations of $250 million for training, as well as two additional measures: the Canada summer jo

Government Operations committee  It's taxpayers' money, yes, absolutely.

Government Operations committee  Both CRF money and the EI account money is taxpayers' money, so you have the EI account and you have the five weeks. You have the career transition assistance that is about to be launched, which allows people to be on training and provides part I benefit support for up to 104 wee

Government Operations committee  It's part of the EI account, which has its own processes for authorizing that funding and is paid for by the Canadian taxpayers.

Government Operations committee  Perhaps I could just add one small clarification on that. It is important to recognize that the government froze the EI rate at $1.73 for 2009 and 2010, so that means this is providing a direct stimulus because the rates aren't going up, and that's a significant saving to both em

Government Operations committee  Thank you for your question. In development of the economic action plan, a range of issues was considered, and certainly whether one eliminates the two-week waiting period or provides additional weeks at the end was assessed. We provided an estimate of how many people would be b

Government Operations committee  Let me please turn to my colleague to answer that question.

Government Operations committee  The budget clearly spelled out the measures we were asked to implement, and under the guidance of the deputy minister we did so in a very diligent fashion.

Human Resources committee  Thank you. The actuary--the same actuary who does the actual work for the EI account--and his team were completely involved in all the calculations and estimates that went into this program. We have a policy group that provides estimates and we have an actuarial group that car