I think (f) is problematic. December 10 does not leave us a lot of time to properly do our work. This is another $7 billion of expenditures. The December 10 is Friday, so we basically get less than a week.
Today is gone, so we're getting three days for $7 billion of new spending—this after it has come to light that organized criminals profited off the CERB, that wealthy executives and shareholders inadvertently profited off subsidies that were intended for wage earners, that prisoners received CERB payments, that ESDC officials got instructions from ministers to keep paying out the CERB even in cases where they suspected fraud, and also that when there are a million vacant jobs, the government has been paying people not to work. That is while there are a million jobs unfilled.
Conservatives are not prepared to simply ram through another $7 billion of expenditures. If this were such an urgent matter, then the Prime Minister wouldn't have shut down Parliament for half a year.
This is our first finance committee meeting since June. It's now December. The government's bad planning is not everyone else's emergency. They shut down Parliament for the whole summer. They didn't need to do that. They prorogued earlier on and didn't need to do that. They called an unnecessary election. They didn't need to do that. Then they waited another two months after getting back to reconvene Parliament. They didn't need to do that.
Now they say they're in a rush. Well, when you show up to work for the first time after a six-month break, say that you're behind schedule and expect all your co-workers to scramble to clean up your mess, don't be surprised if they say, “Whoa. Wait a minute here.” Let's look into the details, especially given how many mistakes this government has made with our tax dollars in the last year and a half.
I would propose that we simply remove (f) and allow the committee to decide when its study is concluded. Once we have heard enough witnesses and have done enough scrutiny and the majority of committee members are happy to proceed to a decision, then we could move to conclude testimony and begin clause-by-clause study in order to send the legislation back to the House.