Environment committee  I have a short summary here. For the 2006-2007 fiscal year, we are not planning to make any payments to any foundations. Last year, we paid $150 million into the Green Municipal Fund mentioned by Mr. Cullen. I could add that from 1999-2000 to 2005-2006, the average was $122 million.

Environment committee  I'm looking at page 8-5 of the estimates, and here we have $803 million versus prior years of $835 million, so I'm not quite sure where the member came from with the $92 million.

Environment committee  I'll ask Mr. Craig Ferguson to provide you with the contextual information.

Environment committee  If it would be all right, perhaps I'll just call on Mr. Alex Manson to provide that.

Environment committee  Mr. Chair, I think my colleague, Mr. Mokhtar, wants to provide one comment.

Environment committee  Thank you very much for this question. It's somewhat technical, but as you know, the previous government was in a position to assess all climate change programs. This review enabled us to determine to what extent the programs would go forward. The $34.5 million and the amounts that were allocated to the climate change programs were approved by the current government.

Environment committee  For 2006-2007?

Environment committee  Thank you.

Environment committee  Thank you for this. As I was trying to mention before, if you'd actually looked at the public accounts, you'd have seen that we've spent pretty much a billion dollars a year. Our main estimates focused primarily on a lot of the ongoing expenditures over time, but we do have a lot of programs or initiatives that have sunsetted over three or four years.

Environment committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to point out that if you ever need additional information here at the table, we would be happy to provide it. As to your question concerning page 45 and the agency, concerning whether we have already spent the money in connection with the credits, the answer is no, and we have not done anything.

Environment committee  Yes. The budget is approximately $5,183,000.

Environment committee  Yes.

Environment committee  Thank you very much for your question. On a point of information, I can answer questions concerning the activities and operations of our department, but not questions about the portfolio. I was under the impression that the questions would really pertain to our department. I can ask my colleague, who is in charge of the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, the NRTEE, to answer this question.

Environment committee  Again I would say it's for the government to establish priorities, and as a public servant I'm here to follow them.

Environment committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll reiterate what I mentioned before. On its own, climate change is not something that you can deal with. It's an impact, if you like, based on a lot of other activities that we do. So in terms of how we organized our program activity architecture last year, which is essentially how you are reading the estimates, the climate change portion per se was really quite discrete and focused on some particular objectives, informed by the work that we're doing from the other strategic outcomes, and also informed by the horizontal nature of the activities we undertake with the rest of government officials.