Public Accounts committee  It depends on what you mean by financing. I would say that a shovel-ready project means that the project is well scoped out and most of the approval processes have been gone through, but I would have thought the financing was the last thing, actually, that would take place. But I

Public Accounts committee  Oh. Well, prior to the action plan being put in place, we gave some thought to how best to design such an action plan. Even with shovel-ready projects, there clearly are certain delays that one will encounter in getting these things under way. So the formulation of the plan was

Public Accounts committee  Up until September 2010, it was estimated that the plan created or preserved some 200,000 jobs.

Public Accounts committee  Two hundred thousand.

Public Accounts committee  Clearly, it is very difficult to make such an accurate distinction in times of recession. However, we can give you a very general estimate of the number of jobs related to employment insurance measures, which were jobs that were maintained rather than created, and the number of j

Public Accounts committee  I would respond by saying that there would be an additional 200,000 unemployed workers in Canada today if the government had not implemented the economic action plan.

Public Accounts committee  No, not at all.

Public Accounts committee  In September, the government indicated that of the $29 billion for fiscal year 2010-2011, $28.6 billion had been committed, virtually all of the money.

Public Accounts committee  [Editor's Note: Inaudible] for Infrastructure Canada.

Public Accounts committee  In terms of assessing the impact of the economic action plan, when the government announced the plan in 2009, we attached our assessment of the anticipated impact to the budget document. Then, in Budget 2010, we published an update to that same assessment to say where things were

Public Accounts committee  Sure.

Public Accounts committee  Indeed, some of the issues you just raised are quite pertinent. I guess there's a series of issues. First, we were looking in terms of infrastructure projects at a wide number of project proponents, each of which may have their own view as to what constitutes a job. Is a three-

Public Accounts committee  First of all, in terms of the first year amounts, the $33 billion was actually spent on the economic action plan. That's a massive amount of money in 2009-10. The government followed an expedited strategy, as you know, to get these programs in place, and the first pillar of that

Public Accounts committee  With me is Mr. Benoît Robidoux, Assistant Deputy Minister, Department of Finance.