Mr. Chair, on Tuesday, MPs from all parties of the finance committee unanimously passed a motion calling on the government to fully fund the Auditor General. Massive pre-COVID spending, a failing infrastructure program with 20,000 projects unaccounted for, new Crown corporations with giant budgets and unprecedented COVID support programs have vastly increased the Auditor General's workload.
Yesterday the Minister of Canadian Heritage said that if the Auditor General needed more money all he had to do was ask. Mr. Chair, he's already asked. The Auditor General has repeatedly asked for an additional $11 million. They've been asking for this money since 2018 and the government keeps saying no. Now, the Auditor General has stopped working on performance audits and for two years in a row has testified at the public accounts committee that the Office of the Auditor General doesn't have enough money to do its job.
This government is hiding from Parliament and it's hiding from the Auditor General, while hundreds of billions of dollars are being rushed out the door.