You said that we have the tools we need, but I have here a quotation from your predecessor, Mr. Page. In the Canadian Parliamentary Review, he wrote this:
One of the key principles underlying responsible parliamentary government is that the House of Commons holds the “power of the purse”. The House must be able to satisfy itself, as the confidence chamber, that all spending and taxation is consistent with legislation, Parliament's intentions, and the principles of parliamentary control. When this is accomplished, Parliament is serving Canadians.
In my view, this is rarely accomplished.
I think he meant that we as parliamentarians do not have the tools we need to do the job adequately. The main estimates really are the most detailed report in which the government indicates what it wants to spend across all its programs. But rarely do the various committees, including the finance committee, analyze the government's intentions with any rigour.
This is about the budget and soon we will be studying the bill that is to implement it. We have already objected to the short amount of time we have to examine this bill in an appropriate and meaningful way. The same applies to the government's accounts.
How could we change things to make the government accountable to Parliament and to the House of Commons?