I withdraw my remarks, Madam Chair. I simply wanted to point out that I had raised a question of privilege in the House last Wednesday to tell the Speaker that, in our opinion, the minister lied to the House on the night the estimates were studied. I wanted to save the committee some time, which is why I did not go into detail. Thank you to my colleague for helping me clarify that. He knows that he is greatly appreciated.
This will have to be constantly repeated to Quebeckers: The Liberal platform is not a piece of legislation, a committee or Parliament. It is not balanced. If the Liberals want to present their entire platform all at once, let them table it in the House. If however they want to start choosing the parts for which they are willing to table measures right away, such as parts that appeal to the government's friends or oil developers, I do not agree with that. If they think they can table measures by proposing tax cuts without knowing how they will be funded and put things off by preparing an accounting reform that will conceal the state of public finances, I do not agree with that.
What's more, the last time I checked, Brian Mulroney did not call an election in 1984 when there were fixed election dates. Although that calendar is not binding, the Prime Minister deliberately broke away from the calendar. An election has never been called for the purpose of tabling a budget.
The Minister of Finance dutifully repeats his lines. He tells us constantly that the world has changed. He repeated that every 10 minutes during the election campaign as a reason for opposing certain oil projects while supporting others, or for initially supporting the carbon tax and then opposing it. The world has changed, but it seems that public finances have not changed enough for a budget to be tabled.
The fact is that the government is afraid to table a budget. It does not know how to balance it and what to put in it. I think we need a budget as soon as possible, or at the very least an economic statement providing a minor update including all the—