Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm happy there's quorum because I know that when I've moved motions to adjourn and my colleagues on the Conservative side have agreed to adjourn, I've been really quite entertained by the fact that the government continues to vote against adjourning so that I can continue explaining to them all the intricacies of ministerial accountability, and so that I can explain to them why we need to have the minister here, like her colleague the Minister of Industry has done in trying to be held accountable for a $14 billion unbooked expenditure. I certainly would like to ask the Minister of Finance.... Besides the fact that she clearly has a different definition of return on investment—and if she doesn't, maybe she should explain to the industry minister what return on investment is.... But if she does have a different explanation, I would like to know that.
I would also like to ask her, if she would show up for the two hours in our "finding Freeland" effort, if we could find a way to understand what in the Financial Administration Act allows the minister to commit the government to $13 billion of spending for this Volkswagen thing beyond the fiscal framework. The minister does not have parliamentary authority to do that because the parliamentary authority that the minister seeks with Bill C-47 is just to amend some financial acts and many acts that have nothing to do with the budget that the minister is....
Perhaps in "finding Freeland" maybe the minister is actually reading the act, Bill C-47, which amends these 51 acts and doing her cross-referencing to the 51 acts to make sure that she understands and prepares herself well for the incredibly insightful questions that I think all parties will ask the minister if and when she shows up on the 16th. We'll be thrilled to have her next week on the 16th for two hours, but for some reason she's unwilling to commit to two hours, which is a small amount of time given the fact that she has that much—