Thank you.
I appreciate your comments, Mr. Whalen, but we're going to quite strongly disagree with the need...not just with the need for this study. I mean, $100 million is a lot of money, and I appreciate that there has been a change in how advertising has been handled to today. I feel bad saying this after all our kind words back and forth recently, but $100 million to this government—that's less than what they're spending on providing free charging stations to wealthy Tesla owners. So $100 million in the context of this government is pennies.
We have before us two very important studies on the PBO. The last time we met on the estimates studies, we saw Mr. Brison quite strongly trying to push through a change to our Standing Orders. It has been argued, and it can be argued, that the whole reason Parliament exists is the oversight of spending. The attempt by the government to change the Standing Orders to deprive the opposition of that oversight is quite an important thing. The PBO has come out very, very strongly, and the past PBO as well has come out very strongly, against the proposed changes of the estimates process as proposed by Mr. Brison. I think it would be tragic and near criminal to dismiss his arguments when we're looking at changing the way we base.... The basic reason that we exist as a Parliament is spending oversight. If we're going to change that, without possibly even unanimous consent, we should hear from the parliamentary budget officer.
On the second point, it's been long-standing that we were going to study procurement. We've seen recently, not just with the Super Hornets with the dispute with Boeing, perhaps the government backing away from what we believe is politically charged sole-sourcing that could spend $7 billion of taxpayers' money for political reasons. The shipbuilding thing we're seeing is going off the rails. In a committee of the whole recently, we saw how.... There have been 52 amendments made to the ship design, pushing back the possible building of ships for a long time and adding billions. The procurement minister herself specifically said that no designs will be considered unless they're a mature design or an existing design. We have now seen a push-back by the government to allow BAE to add their design. The design that BAE is submitting to us is only on paper, so it breaks the rules of the procurement minister herself. Sad, but not only is it a very immature, on-paper only design, it's been refused by the Royal Navy.
I think it's incumbent upon us, for the largest procurement project in Canadian history, to start looking at it immediately, especially with all the changes. Public Services and Procurement is already violating the minister's rules on the design considerations by considering a design by BAE, which has been rejected by its own country. There are 52 amendments made to the design, adding millions, perhaps billions, to the cost, pushing back the project.
We've also heard from the president of Irving that hundreds, if not thousands, of jobs are at risk in Nova Scotia due to these delays. I think it's incumbent upon us, for the billions being spent and the fact that the procurement office is violating the minister's own rules on the shipbuilding, to start studying it as soon as possible and not put at risk thousands of jobs in Nova Scotia and billions of dollars of taxpayers' money for a design that is possibly no good if it's been explicitly banned from the Royal Navy from being considered as a design.
Thank you.