Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
It's very disturbing that you first brought up on April 12 of this year the problems you were having getting detailed information from government departments about how they were going to achieve the reductions they were supposed to achieve through the freeze. Of course, on October 5 of this year, my colleague Madame Bourgeois raised a motion trying to assist you, calling on the government to provide you with that information. The motion was passed, and yet you still don't have it.
I want to review some of the departments and the amounts that they are talking about in terms of budget reductions. I think you'll confirm in each case that you don't have the information on how that's going to be achieved.
For Agriculture, we've heard all kinds of concerns from colleagues about the difficulties farmers are having, yet we see a $3 million cut for the Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food.
We see a $14 million cut to the CBC. We have no idea what that means and what the impact of that is going to be.
At a time when we see record waiting times for people to deal with immigration files, whether it's for someone who wants to come to Canada, who wants to bring a relative, perhaps, say, their spouse.... I know people who are waiting for their spouse to come to Canada. In fact I can think of a case in which a women and her daughter are here and they're waiting for the husband, the father, to come from Africa. They have been told by the minister's office, “Don't even talk to us until the application has been in for a year.” Often it takes at least 18 months for those to be processed, and yet we see a cut to that department of $2.5 million, and they aren't able to tell us how they're going to achieve that.
We see the Department of Environment being cut by $3 million. We don't know how that's going to be achieved and what they're actually cutting.
We see the Department of Fisheries and Oceans being cut by $6.5 million. I can tell you, having some experience as a former minister of that department, it's one that was always tight for dollars and usually underfunded, like Immigration. I'd like to know how they're going to accomplish that and what important programs they're going to be cutting as a result.
The Department of Health is being cut by $5 million.
The National Research Council, as if innovation and research weren't important, is being cut by $3 million.
Statistics Canada is being cut by $3.35 million. That's no surprise in view of the government's attitude towards information, towards the long-form census, for example.
It's even more interesting, perhaps, that the Department of National Defence is facing a cut of $80 million, and we have no idea how they're going to achieve that.
We see the Canada Border Services Agency being cut by $9 million, and we have no information on how they're going to do that.
We have CSIS. This is a government that talks about how great it is on security issues, and here they are cutting Defence by $80 million, Border Services--I'm sure that would be a concern to the Americans--by $9 million, CSIS by $5 million, and Corrections by $5 million. You've already raised the concern that the things they're doing and the bills they're passing are going to increase the cost of corrections, and yet they're projecting that they're going to save $5 million and can't say how. And of course $3.6 million is being cut from the RCMP.
What comments do you have on that, Mr. Page?