Thank you, Chair.
One thing that concerns me, that brought me to Ottawa, and I think it concerns all of us as MPs, is the efficiency of expenditure of government money and government resources. We're here on the payroll of taxpayers. For us to duplicate the efforts of another committee that is more narrowly focused on the very thing that Ms. Ratansi proposes to review, strikes me as a horrible waste of time and money. Therefore, I'll be voting against this.
The mandate of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts includes a review of and report on.... Well, we've heard about that.
The mandate of the operations committee, and that's the other one I'm referring to, is this.
I'm reading from the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates archive: The Committee's government operations mandate includes primarily the study of the effectiveness of government operations; expenditure plans of central departments and agencies, commissions, selected Crown corporations and organizations; new and emerging information and communications technologies (ICTs) in the government; and statutory programs, tax expenditures, loan guarantees, contingency funds and private foundations
Therefore, it's no coincidence that Alister Smith of Treasury Board has appeared no less than ten times already before this other committee to deal with these things, Ms. Ratansi. And John Baird, the minister, was there today already.
So they're way ahead of us. They're more narrowly focused. I don't propose to sit and waste taxpayers' money by doing what someone else is already doing.