Natural Resources committee  Probably, but I'm not sure. I'm not an expert on the premiums that insurers charge operators.

Natural Resources committee  That is correct.

Natural Resources committee  The rationale for putting the 20% was to limit to 20% the amount of the $650 million fund that the minister could pay out before the tribunal was put in place. It's correct that of the $650 million, some of those funds would be private insurance and some would be federal moneys.

Natural Resources committee  Yes, we would.

Natural Resources committee  Our interest was, in the event of a very serious accident, to rely very heavily on the tribunal to provide effective, efficient, and equitable compensation of victims. So we wanted to hold onto as much of the fund as possible for, actually, the claims determination by the tribuna

Natural Resources committee  No, it would not be.

Natural Resources committee  Oh yes, but we're talking about the establishment of the tribunal, so this interim payment would only be made between the time that a declaration was made, saying, okay, stop the payments under insurance--

Natural Resources committee  That's correct.

Natural Resources committee  I'm not saying that it's necessarily problematic. What I'm saying is that the rationale for us to have the 20% was to seek to maintain as much of the moneys as possible for distribution by the tribunal. The 20% was chosen as minimizing the payout before the tribunal was in place.

Natural Resources committee  The situation would be that these demands would be coming to the minister to pay out, as opposed to a tribunal that would be in place and would have the expertise to deal with payouts like this. Our view was that it would be best to try to minimize the amount of funds that was be

Natural Resources committee  That's correct, and it would reduce the amount of funds available for the tribunal to pay out once it was in place.

Natural Resources committee  Well, I guess my last comment would be that it's always open to the government to provide additional payments outside of the scheme entirely, in the event of an incident.

Natural Resources committee  Within the $650 million, as I mentioned previously, there is an amount of federal funding that would be provided. For example, if the incident were caused by a terrorist action, then we understand, at this time, that 80% of all payouts would be covered by federal funds. So they w

Natural Resources committee  The total amount is limited to $650 million, so even if it were all federal government moneys that were spent, the amount would not exceed $650 million. So moving the percentage from 20% to 40% would not increase the payout over $650 million.

Natural Resources committee  Yes.