Government Operations committee  No, no, no. Thank you for the question because it gives me the opportunity to quote from the best document, the best diagnosis of the conditions of our Aboriginal peoples and communities. This is the former auditor general’s report on First Nations, from May 2011, chapter 4. Thi

Government Operations committee  It is a norm that we have large supplementaries; they can be (A) or (B). That links to the previous question. Most of our core programs are contribution programs. We give money out in return for services being delivered. They are hard-wired to sunset at some point, so we are cons

Government Operations committee  —going into budget cycles trying to seek their renewal. There will be another batch this year, and another batch, and another batch, and until more of these programs are on a statutory and legislative basis, this is the cycle. This year is a fairly large year because there was a

Government Operations committee  My understanding of it is that these are actually going to go into payouts on more than 50 settlements that we've reached.

Government Operations committee  As I said in an earlier answer, they're often very small settlements, but all the same, they are meaningful for the communities. We expect in this fiscal year to pay out 51 claim settlements.

Government Operations committee  It's a bit of both, Mr. Chairman. We have staff who are involved in preparing the cases and actually doing the negotiating. There are Department of Justice lawyers. I think the bulk of it would be in our appropriations, because we have a service contract with the Department of J

Government Operations committee  No. I would say that it's the legal work to do the assessments and the opinions to enable our negotiators to make offers. The bulk of the money, I'm quite confident, is actually the cheques that go out in settlements.

Government Operations committee  I believe I am correct in saying that, on our website, you can find a table describing the ways we are implementing the reductions as a result of this budget. They are achieved in operating budgets and in grants budgets. Fifteen or so initiatives are listed. It has been up on ou

Government Operations committee  The only effects on services to communities come as a result of the measures we have already discussed: the reductions for councils and political organizations. Those are the only measures that affect external services. As I have tried to explain, we made cuts to our operating b

Government Operations committee  I do have some of the details of what the specific injection this year is going to. It hasn't been fully allocated, as I'll come to in a second. The minister made an announcement earlier in the summer. In particular, we're focusing on some of the big, expensive projects in remo

Government Operations committee  That is another example, I must say, of a sunsetting program. The authorities simply ran out and the decision in the budget was to extend them for one more year. We're in the same loop. They will run out next March 31, and we hope that the next federal budget will extend the prog

Government Operations committee  I think what the assessment tells you—and it's a very candid snapshot of the state of water and waste water facilities across the country—is what is the upper bound of what it could cost. It makes some assumptions about what kinds of solutions...they tend to be the high-end ones,

Government Operations committee  I don't know the arithmetic of future budgets, and I don't know how fast some of these new technologies will be deployed.

Government Operations committee  I'd have to do the math on that. We are building as many systems as we can. Sometimes the system is an extension; what's starting to happen more and more is a sharing of facilities between reserves and neighbouring communities. Because this is a challenge for small municipalities

Government Operations committee  What happened in the budget, as I'm sure you remember, is that the government declared its intention to have legislation in place by the end of this Parliament. There is a process under way with the Assembly of First Nations and other regional groups. We had a national panel on K