Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, committee members, and thank you, Mr. Chair, for summarizing where we are on the subamendment to the amendment for our effort to find Freeland. I hope it's not free Freeland, as we talked about earlier...that the PMO has given her the latitude to appear before us. We would like the free Freeland.
We assume that she can make up her own mind, but we are still curious, as to the finding Freeland effort, about the six appearances in the House since January and her lack of willingness to accept previous very polite and well-worded invitations by this committee to appear in the last six months. It's very curious that the minister has chosen not to.
Before I get back into the ministerial accountability document of Treasury Board, I spoke earlier in terms of accountability and about the spending that this budget Bill C-47, which amends 51 acts of Parliament, imposes on Canadians and their wallets over the next five years. I spoke about the paycheque deterioration that we've seen as a result of the fiscal program of this Minister of Finance. Her willingness, obviously, to be questioned for two hours is very important. We think that is a small amount of time, given that this is a $490-billion budget and a$3.1 trillion spending plan over the next five years.
Quite frankly, in two hours, it will be extremely difficult to question her on the 51 acts of the Government of Canada that this bill intends to amend. In fact, without that I'm not sure that we could get to the creation of a new corporation—the CIC—in that timeframe.
I'm not sure that we could get to the creation of yet another global investment fund. It seems like every six years we have a growth fund, a global investment fund or a fund of some sort that gets $15 billion.
I'm sure we're not going to get to the $14 billion Volkswagen contract. I think it was mentioned earlier. It seems awfully embarrassing for me and it actually almost brings a tear to my eye that the only thing in this five-year fiscal framework for that $14-billion dollar VW contract is the mere $778 million dollars that the federal government is going to subsidize Volkswagen for to built a plant. The $13 billion that the minister announced so proudly both in Ontario and also in the House.... He is very proud of it and very effervescent when he talks about it. He is very proud of the fact that the $13 billion is not actually even in the fiscal framework. That spending actually happens further beyond this fiscal framework.
I suspect that the current minister of industry is hoping that, as prime minister, he will be able to cut the ribbon on this plant five years from now and actually be responsible for then providing $13 billion of subsidy.
Did I mention that Volkswagen last year had the same revenue as the Government of Canada? Volkswagen's revenue last year was $413 billion. Guess what. The federal government's revenue was, I believe, $412 billion or $413 billion. The difference is that Volkswagen actually made a $200-billion profit last year, I believe it was. The federal government, having the same revenue, actually made a $40-billion deficit. They lost $40 billion.