Well, I think it's all bang on in terms of successive crime bills, you know, with these mandatory minimum sentences.
We deserve to know the real cost of some of these that we think are ideologically driven points of view, and I personally have a lot more faith in the estimates that you bring to the table than the notions of the minister standing up saying it's going to cost x, y, z. The value of the PBO is that we're the government operations and estimates committee, and we do very little work actually on estimating what's going to be the actual cost of government programs that are brought to us.
Let me deal for a minute, Mr. Page, with the first topic here, the operating budget freeze. You ask some questions that you think parliamentarians should dwell on here. The second bullet point that you've got as a consideration is “Are the savings realizable or cashable?” Are we going to be able to bring down the deficit by freezing operational spending? Could that in fact trigger other costs in other areas? Is there a measurable benefit to the course of action they've taken?