One of the things we learned out of the sponsorship scandal is that if mis-spending occurs and parliamentarians have no ability to check or challenge, a lot of damage can be done long before anyone is able to actually hold government to account. What ends up happening is often in hindsight: access to information requests, and having to track down how the money was spent.
It's a very frustrating situation for a member of the opposition to be looking at certain line items in the estimates, where there is clearly a substantial amount of discretionary spending power for the government, and to have no accountability from the government on how this is being spent.
For example, in the 2005-06 and 2007-08 budgets under Heritage, the “Celebrate Canada!” fund was bumped up 900%; it was a major anomaly of $30 million, when over that period other Heritage Canada funding had been dropped by $31 million, and trying to get an answer as to whether we were buying cake and balloons across the country with $30 million was like dealing with a labyrinth in Heritage. They were claiming no, this is money that's going for the 400th anniversary of Quebec, even though we already had another line item for the 400th anniversary of Quebec, or it's for this, it's for that, it's for the other. But under the line item it was clearly for “Celebrate Canada!”
You can raise alarm bells, you can deal with the media, and you can try to get access to information—although good luck, these days; all your access to information is being delayed. Do you have a role whereby we could then ask the Library of Parliament how money is normally spent through this, or an independent voice that can actually tell us whether this discretionary line item has substantially changed and whether it's a common practice for certain line items to be boosted like that?
If we don't have the ability to challenge government—we often can't challenge them until after the money is spent, and we have to then go and see where it was spent—major problems can occur. How do we work with your office to be able to verify the claims that are being made when the estimates come out?