But when you're six months away from a federal election, that spending is going to happen now and the ruling party is going to get the credit for that spending. It might be after the fact, if ever, that we get a chance to assess whether the money was distributed fairly. That's why we've been saying we need something at the front end. In fact I think that's why this committee was created, so there would be an analysis of the estimates in greater detail instead of an analysis after the fact, with the public accounts committee and the Auditor General.
In my home province of Manitoba, you drag the minister before the estimates committee and sometimes they're there all night, going line by line. “How can you possibly propose to spend that? Why do you propose to spend here and not here?” We don't do that in this Parliament at all.
With these extraordinary circumstances, such that they're asking us to approve, and we have in fact approved, we want a greater element of that advance analysis. We want to know if it's a good idea to spend this money in the way they're proposing. And we want to be assured that there's no hanky-panky or attempt to spend that money to the best advantage of the ruling party, which some of us more jaded people strongly suspect there will be.
Thank you.