Thank you.
I think the motion is self-explanatory. Perhaps I could add a couple of words to the motion.
The Honourable Jim Flaherty, Canada's Minister of Finance, is not a rookie politician. In fact, he's quite the opposite. He's a very experienced politician. That's why it's quite worrisome that there was this violation of Treasury Board guidelines.
Even more perplexing and worrisome is the explanation that this was fine because there was value for money. We know that Mr. MacPhie, a long-time Conservative stalwart going back to the time of Mr. Harris, obviously got tremendous value for the money he received. Perhaps there's a long-standing relationship with the minister. Perhaps there was value for money for the minister. But I'm not convinced that this renders value for money for the Canadian taxpayer.
Secondly, even more worrisome is that after an admission of violation of Treasury Board guidelines, we've seen through access to information documents that there has been a series of these contracts just below the $25,000 limit. This is something similar to what we saw in the RCMP investigation of pension insurance funds, when we talked about the rigged contracting system. We saw a similar pattern of nudging just below the limit.
Instead of addressing this violation thoroughly and making sure that in the future these sorts of things do not occur, we've seen a new manner in which to circumvent Treasury Board guidelines. This is why I think it's incumbent upon us to bring the minister before us.