Government Operations committee  No.

Government Operations committee  That's correct.

Government Operations committee  I believe we are talking about a two-year plan here, and funding will indeed be provided throughout the two years to municipalities and provinces. It's a large plan that includes federal infrastructure spending by Public Works, Infrastructure Canada, and others, so there's a wide

Government Operations committee  The minister has already spoken about this, so I don't want to add much more. But it's true that the Building Canada fund is a seven-year plan, and I think Infrastructure Canada and Transport Canada administer 14 different infrastructure funds. So there are different funds that c

Government Operations committee  That's correct. The budget initiative is vote-worthy. This says very clearly that it is for budget initiatives only, for Budget 2009 initiatives specifically.

Government Operations committee  We do know what's in chapter 3. There's a long list of items. I didn't have the benefit of hearing what Minister Baird said, but I'm sure he talked about infrastructure programs that will be available for the construction season. So there are some elements there that I think one

Government Operations committee  I'd be happy to explain that. Treasury Board vote 5 is a vote for contingency purposes. The vote wording deals with miscellaneous, urgent, or unforeseen items. There's a limit of $750 million, and departments use it as a line of credit to borrow under approvals from Treasury Boa

Government Operations committee  I don't think that's correct. I'll ask my colleague Mr. Pagan to describe more of the Treasury Board vote 5 procedure. For vote 35, the items must be budget initiatives. They must be in the January 27 budget, so they are already confined to that budget. We also make other requir

Government Operations committee  The allocations have to occur within the period of time from the passage of interim supply--therefore it can't be before the beginning of April--to the end of June. Then the allocations are provided to departments in the same way that supplementary estimates are provided to depar

Government Operations committee  Could I address the two questions? I hear one being about the speed, and I will start with that. In a normal year cash would not flow until December. Last year we made a change. We introduced supplementary estimates (A) in June, and cash can now flow. Assuming we have supplemen

Government Operations committee  There are top-ups to existing programs where you have terms of reference--a functioning program that's been in place for some time--and it's quite easy to get the final approvals. That's quite different from new programs that may require longer. The first allocations could start

Government Operations committee  Thank you, Chair and committee. This is a unique central vote. We, of course, use central votes for other purposes, including contingencies, carry-forward paylists, and other further purposes. But this is a one-time-only vote, which would be used for a very limited time and woul

Government Operations committee  There is actually no difference in the way we would treat an item charged to the central vote from supplementary estimates (A) items, for example. All these items would be required to pass all the due diligence tests at Treasury Board. They would require approval by Treasury Boar

Government Operations committee  Actually, we have been in discussion with the Auditor General and we now have internal audit committees with external members in all departments who will already have started to conduct due diligence.

Government Operations committee  We can say this. When you look at the budget, you have the entire economic action plan in chapter 3. The Budget Implementation Act contains a number of specific measures, and the remainder will either be in the supplementary estimates (A) or the central vote. The central vote is