Okay, well thank you, Mr. Chair.
I think it is, and I would have debated in the same point of order the point I would make, which is that I can't imagine anything more relevant for the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates to discuss and to reflect on than our obligation to make a thorough and robust examination of the estimates, be they the supplementary or the main estimates, as per the recommendations of the report from this very committee which was tabled last year, and of which 15 out of 17 recommendations the government agreed upon, including the ability of the committee to call the witnesses necessary, including the minister.
We have hundreds of millions of dollars flying by this committee with a cursory examination and no comment from the government. This is what I mean about ministerial accountability. The minister has to come before Parliament to ask permission to spend money just as the Auditor General appears before the public accounts committee to examine how that money was spent. The minister has to come before that spending takes place to get our permission. That is a very fundamental cornerstone of our parliamentary democracy and it's being flagrantly dismissed as an inconvenience by this government. For a member here to try to say that it was unanimous that we all agreed that it was okay for only officials to appear to explain hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of spending is an absolute falsehood. I won't use the word “lie” but it's a misrepresentation of what took place. We insisted—we demanded—and we fought tooth and nail to get the minister here.