Thank you, Mr. Antoine. Welcome to the Legislative Assembly, guys. We're on directorate, general comments, Department of Finance. Are we ready for detail?

I'm hearing detail. On page 3-9, directorate, operations expense, total operations expense, $1.282 million.

On page 3-11, treasury, operations expense, total operations expense, $7.546 million.

Page 3-15, fiscal policy, operations expense, total operations expense, $808,000.

Page 3-17, bureau of statistics, operations expense, total operations expense, $885,000. Mr. Bell.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We know that from the Minister's opening comments -- I believe it's in his opening comments -- he's indicated that we spent some extra money in this area in order to try to address the shortcomings, as we see them, of the last census. I'm wondering if the Minister could update us on his success or progress to date in having the federal government look at those numbers and reassess the census. Can he give us some sense of the headway that he's making?

Thank you, Mr. Bell. Mr. Handley.

Mr. Chairman, the work that we did in doing counts or census in communities identified about 4,800 people who were missed by the Stats Canada survey. We are in discussions with them, between the bureau of statistics and Stats Canada. We'll get a response back from them in late March on their interim numbers, and their final numbers in September. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. Mr. Bell.

Just to be clear, I think the Minister indicated 4000 people we've identified as the undercount. Can the Minister indicate if that's the accurate percentage that he was anticipating when he made his projections for this year's budget? I assume we've already accounted for some of this under coverage. Can the Minister tell me if we're on target there?

Thank you, Mr. Bell. Mr. Handley.

Mr. Chairman, yes, that's pretty well accurate. I think we had used the figure of 10.8 percent, and this works out pretty closely to that. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. Mr. Bell.

Would it be fair to say, though, if we're just going to be conservative and cautious here, that we've made our calculations and projections and talked about the deficit we have going forward and the room we have on the debt wall with using this 10 percent under coverage, and using the assumptions from that? So if the federal government turns around and isn't willing to acknowledge that under coverage number, we're going to have to reassess. In fact, the picture that we've laid out now will be slightly worse, I would assume, if they don't accept our numbers and in fact push that down somewhat. Is that true?

Thank you, Mr. Bell. Mr. Handley.

Yes, Mr. Chairman, that's true. If, for whatever reason, Stats Canada disagreed with our numbers -- and we have no indication that they have any problem with them, but if they did -- then any percentage lower than ours would cost us money and we would really have to reassess where we're at, depending on what their numbers are. Again, I want to emphasize the numbers we get in March are preliminary numbers. They're not final until September. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. Page 3-17, bureau of statistics, operations expense, total operations expense, $885,000.

Page 3-18, information item, active positions.