All right.
With regard to the main motion, we are obviously more than prepared to have people from every one of the affected departments that the opposition describes come before the committee to discuss these cuts. We are more than glad to have them here, obviously.
The Treasury Board president, Mr. Baird, was here discussing expenditure review and the $1 billion in cuts, and quite proudly. In fact, the opposition ran out of time for questions. If the opposition has more questions, we'd be more than glad to have ministers come before the committee. Minister Fortier has agreed to be here in the near future.
In our parliamentary process, one of the reasons why we don't have officials come ahead of ministers is generally because officials implement the policy, but the government sets the policy. When John Baird comes here, if there afterwards are supplementary questions about how the expenditure review is being enforced by the Treasury Board, it is entirely perfect for any member of this committee and any member of the House to ask those officials how the expenditure reviews are being implemented. But if the question is policy--in other words, why was this cut and not that--then you ask the minister first, because it's the minister who made the call.
So the minister comes first, and often with their officials. If a committee wants to know why the court challenges program was cut, you ask the minister. If you want to ask how the cut is being implemented, you ask the officials. The officials are often there with the minister, or can come after the minister.
Within our parliamentary process, having deputy ministers and people from regional offices come before the committee gets it exactly backwards. The purpose of committees is to scrutinize government decisions, not to scrutinize bureaucrats who are putting in place the decisions made by cabinet and by the ministers responsible.
Every minister that this committee has asked to come before it has agreed to come. We have a set schedule here.
Frankly, this motion is redundant. It gets parliamentary procedure precisely backwards, in that ministers, not officials, are responsible for the decisions. Therefore, we will be voting against this motion.
But we are entirely prepared to defend our cuts. As a matter of fact, we're quite proud of our budget. We were very pleased to see it pass the House of Commons with the full support of all the opposition parties.