Transport committee  That is correct. The main estimates for 2014-15 were $3.3 billion and they are $3.633 billion this year.

Transport committee  Yes, $300 million higher.

Transport committee  Here is what we are asking companies to include in their submissions. Three qualified consortia will submit a price for the construction, maintenance and so on, as well as a price for managing a toll system. However, the government will determine how much the toll will be. The company in question will not make a profit or incur any losses related to the toll.

Transport committee  The financial structure is such that toll revenue will essentially go back to the government, not the company. The company is basing its submission on the payment for the cost of the bridge and the subsequent annual payments. As the minister said, the government will consider all of that and determine what the bridge tolls will be at a later date.

Transport committee  The criteria are in line with the trade agreements we have signed. These agreements do not include specific criteria or rules about the origin of materials, for instance.

Transport committee  Basically, the criteria had to do with technical skills, financial strength, construction expertise and so on. Initially, there were six groups. The objective of this exercise was to reduce the number to three because, in the next step—the request for proposals that is being implemented right now—these groups had to invest a substantial amount of money to bring the proposals to the level of sophistication required for their submission.

Transport committee  We have to maintain a balance between transparency and the financial interests of taxpayers. The objective of the P3 process was to encourage those who make submissions to do as much as they can with as little as possible.

Transport committee  We give them technical specifications, but we don't want to give them too much information on what the others are doing because we want as little collusion as possible.

Transport committee  Let me clarify some points. The inspector positions have never been cut. However, because of the nature of the beast, we have a turnover rate of 6% to 7% per year. What happened is that certain managers did not take the appropriate measures quickly enough to replace the people who were naturally going to have to retire.

Transport committee  On the transportation of dangerous goods and rail safety, we currently have, as of the end of December, 117 rail safety oversight personnel, and on the transportation of dangerous goods we have about 94 on staff as of the end of December. These are both increases from the beginning of the year.

Transport committee  These are people who are working on oversight.

Transport committee  There are 94. That is the number.

Transport committee  The inspectors do both functions, audits and inspections. In the case of TDG, they do inspections. Also currently, in addition to our regular inspectors we have a poster out to our specialized auditors to do our SMS audits on rail safety, as committed to under the management action plan following the Auditor General's report.

Transport committee  The agents that we have are not truly inspectors, in the sense that they don't do inspections; they do analyses of events. They collect information, but we don't have the same powers under the Motor Vehicle Safety Act that we have under other legislation. The other point I would want to make, in complement to the point made about rail safety and transportation of dangerous goods inspectors, is that I have given very specific instructions in the department that in the context of any event such as, for example, the event we are facing now in Gogama, any resources that are required in addition to the budget of resources will be provided from the department and so will not impact other inspections or operations in the department.