Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I will make a brief comment and then ask a question. Of course, it could be more political and it could be addressed to the Minister of Finance or the government, but since they are not here, I would still like to ask the officials of the Department of Finance to give me a technical answer following my comment.
It is about the structure of the bill's budget implementation divisions. We have to study 421 pages by the end of June. Today we are looking at part 5, whose elements are very disparate. All kinds of topics are covered.
In my opinion, the first parts should be about the budget implementation. However, division 18 is an act in itself: the Gateway Civil International Space Station Agreement Implementation Act. It talks about how Canadian law will apply in space. What does that have to do with the budget that was presented?
Division 19 is even more appalling. It's about strip searches, body cavity searches, and being held in a bare cell until the ingested object is expelled. Why are we studying this at the Standing Committee on Finance?
Can senior officials from the Department of Finance explain to me the logic behind this budget implementation bill, which covers lots of topics?