Well, thank you, Mr. Chair. It's great to be back after the question period break. I was pleased to see that, in the House of Commons in question period, the minister who was answering my questions about our subject at hand pronounced “elvers” correctly. That made me happy.
For those who are just joining us, we're having a discussion about a motion by MP Beech, that's been amended by MP Blaikie, to have the Minister of Finance appear for two hours before clause-by-clause. That was subsequently amended again, specifically striking, as I recall, after Mr. Blaikie's paragraph (h), so that it would now read as follows:
h) That the Minister of Finance be invited to appear for two hours....provided that, if the Minister of Finance has not appeared by May 18, 2023 amendments to Bill C-47, notwithstanding subparagraph (b)(i), be submitted to the clerk in both official languages no later than 11:00 a.m. ET the business day following the Minister appearing at Finance committee for a duration of no less than 2 hours.
The budget implementation act, Bill C-47, amends 51—count them—acts of Parliament. It's what otherwise is called, in parliamentary language, an “omnibus” bill. It amends some elements of what is required, or all the financial elements that are required, in a budget, but many, many additional acts, from the Criminal Code to what the symbol of the King's crown will look like in Canada—a very important element for the budget. One of the reasons we need to get the Minister of Finance here....
A colleague who mentioned earlier that the minister has now been in the House six times since January was feeling optimistic that the minister may have turned a new leaf and would be considering appearing more often in Parliament and being held to account. This is really what this is about. With the minister's appearance in question period yesterday, he held out some optimism for today. Alas, he was mistaken.
The question is that the minister spent time here on the weekend, as we know, meeting with friends like Hillary Clinton, but not having the time to commit...although she is committing, apparently. We're told that perhaps, by some sort of communiqué here, she will commit to coming next week, but will not commit to coming for two hours. When you're spending over $490 billion in one year in a budget, and you're spending $3.1 trillion over the five years of the fiscal framework, then we don't think it is a great deal to ask for the minister to spend two hours with a very congenial group of members of Parliament asking questions. Presumably the Deputy Prime Minister is in very fine form in terms of the knowledge of the details of the 51 acts that the minister is proposing to spend.
Just in case the folks who are watching this aren't fully up to speed, let me summarize a few of the financial elements of this piece of legislation.