Thank you, Mr. Chair. In reviewing this supplementary appropriation, I have no problem, given most of the money is coming from the feds or is carried over from the previous year. However, at the beginning of the budget process we were told that the supplementary appropriation available was changed from $25 million to $10 million, as $15 million was transferred to the departments so they wouldn’t have to come back for supps on a regular basis.

In the case of this department, $555,000 minus the $33,000 — $518,000, is being asked for out of that $10 million supplementary appropriation fund that we do have. I was under the impression that the $10 million was basically to be used for emergency cases: things that were not or could not be planned, things that were not foreseen, things that came out of the blue. In the case of the money that’s being asked for here, I’m under the impression that this is something that the departments should have been able to identify and should have been able to plan for and that should be taken out of a portion of that $15 million that was already transferred to them.

Now, I understand the reality that transferring that $15 million to the authorities or the departments wasn’t done until yesterday. At the same time, this is clearly something that we’re going to have a hard time approving if it comes forward in the future, given that it is something that should have been planned and should have been captured within the department as part of that $15 million that was transferred to them.

I was wondering if I could just get the Minister of Finance to talk a little bit about that supp fund and the fact that it was transferred to the authorities and

how this relates to that. To me, this is clearly something that should have been able to be planned.