I want to revisit something that I woke up one night worrying about because it went on so long. It's the question of new government programs in which people do a really lousy job of estimating the cost. Quite literally, if the WestJet pilots and the Air Canada pilots were doing a job of anticipating and estimating like that, I don't think you'd have any sane person flying in an airplane in the country.
The one I'm thinking of is the firearms registry. When the registry was first introduced, my recollection is that the estimated cost of setting it up was $80 million, and it turned out to be $1 billion. A chronic thing that happened almost every year was that 60% or 70% of these costs were coming up as supplementary estimates, and we're not talking about crop failures for which farmers needed special assistance and so on; this was a systematic thing that was going on year after year after year.
This is a committee of accountability, and when we get a really lousy job of estimating like we've had on this gun registry, I want to know who in the system is responsible and accountable for this colossal waste of taxpayers' money. That's the question I have. Surely with the high-priced people we have here today, we should be able to get a clear-cut answer. Who in the system is the one we should be looking at and giving the wet noodle treatment to?