Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Sherbrooke for bringing this matter to the attention of the House. It certainly is a very serious concern in light of citation 31 of Beauchesne's :
Budget secrecy is a political convention and if breached, the minister may be attacked through a substantive motion, but not through a question of privilege.
Certainly this is a very serious matter.
Representing the Reform Party in this House we ask questions of a general nature regarding rumours around the budget and we are told that the specifics or even generalities could not be dealt with in this House until the budget was tabled.
It comes as some shock to me to find out that one caucus in this House was made privy to the details of the budget. According to this article in the paper, the question is whether there is too much secrecy surrounding the budget, not the documents that the hon. government whip was talking about. This is a very serious matter.
Never at any time was our caucus approached by the departmental officials of finance or the minister on whether we would want a briefing on details that would affect even our individual ridings.
Were I as a member of Parliament to have known that there would be a Crow buyout in the budget prior to its tabling, I could have communicated to people back in my riding of this matter. It affects the value of land. It affects the transactions between farmers who may have been actually selling their land at that time. It is a very serious matter with millions of dollars at stake.
I am rather shocked and I want to assure this House that my caucus was not made privy to any of the details of the budget in any manner, particularly as it related to situations of cuts that would affect our riding.
I add my concern and ask the Chair to deal in a very severe way with this important matter.