As I understand it, you believe that the legislative branch, parliamentarians, should not rewrite the budget. You even said at one point that Parliament could not be a controlling element for the government or the executive. That surprised me a bit, since parliaments were created to control the sovereign's expenditures. That seems to have been a fundamental task since the 13th century in England. In the Canadian federation, though, we have the feeling today that it is hard for us to perform our role of studying the government's estimates.
Once a year, we receive the main estimates. Every page of that document represents an average of $500 million in spending, yet we have only a few hours to study it. It is not related to the budget that will be spent later, and it is impossible for us to compare it to the main estimates from the previous year, because in the meantime, we will have approved supplementary estimates on at least two or three occasions.
In short, we have little time, few resources and a document that is hard to use. Based on your experience in New Zealand, what do you think we should do to exercise our power as parliamentarians and conduct a really thorough examination of the government's expenditures?