Finance committee  Yes.

Finance committee  Jean-Michel, perhaps you could answer that question.

Finance committee  The budget was presented in this case in 2008, about the same time as the main estimates were tabled. There was no parliamentary approval at that point to make this payment. That came after the main estimates would have been tabled and approved, and these items are included in th

Finance committee  Those would have been made in June 2008.

Finance committee  Alfred.

Finance committee  I'm quite certain that was a payment made to provinces and it would have been allocated on a per capita basis for investments in public transit.

Finance committee  I don't believe there was matching....

Finance committee  Yes. The principle behind this is that the provinces are accountable to their own legislatures. We don't impose accountability constraints on provinces to the extent that we would, for example, claw the money back if we thought that for some reason the funds weren't spent on thos

Finance committee  The provinces agree, when they get the money, to spend it on the purposes set out in the trust. We don't then go and audit them to determine whether they've spent the moneys or not.

Finance committee  It's an arrangement between two sovereign entities, effectively. The principle behind that arrangement is that they're accountable to their legislature.

Finance committee  Yes, they would have been. Effectively they were, and that was the Budget Implementation Act, 2008. They're here for information only.

Finance committee  No. The payments were made. We're reporting them here for information only.

Finance committee  The government has committed to a block amount of $33 billion for the infrastructure programs, and when it lapses those moneys are pulled forward to future years.

Finance committee  Let's be clear. We had this discussion this morning. The existing $33 billion infrastructure program, which is before the 2009 budget amounts, is reprofiled to future years when it lapses. The governing principle behind the new moneys that have been announced in the 2009 budget i

Government Operations committee  First, the vast majority of programs included in the budget meet an economic need. Many of those programs are already in existence; so we're adding to what is already in place. In those cases, I think it is clear that the departments have the necessary tools and mechanisms to del