Thank you, Mr. Cannon.
Did one of those departments, for which those people work, tell them that we were in an economic recession? If the departments had told those experts that we were in a recession, they might have thought that it would be a good idea to hold the G8 and G20 meetings in the same place. We know the economic context; it seems to me that would have been a normal approach.
There's something else. Regional infrastructure work was done. That's quite abnormal. A landing strip at an airport was renovated at a cost of $4.3 million, and no one landed there. I don't know what that's doing in the G8 budget. Sewer works were carried out 80 km away at a cost of $1.2 million. What legacy do we want to leave those people? What do we want to tell the people of Canada and Quebec? Do we want to tell them that we spent $43 million and that we could have used the one third rule under the program of Canada's Economic Action Plan, but that we decided instead to give the money to that department?
Explain to me why the decision was made to invest that much money in a constituency held by a Conservative Minister of Industry and why the other regions, provinces and cities of Canada had to pay for one-third of the facilities. Why was all that given to that region? Why a $4.3 million runway?