Thank you, Chair.
I'm going to share some of my time with Mr. Giguère.
I have one comment to make.
Mr. Nevison, I appreciate your earlier explanation to Mr. Giguère around the $6 billion—and I don't disagree with you, by the way—but I think it illustrated how difficult it can be sometimes to follow the flow, which we're supposed to do. Part of the mandate of a parliamentarian is to vote on things, and it's difficult to know what the heck you're voting on when you can't follow it sometimes. It is an issue of how easy...and I know Mr. Kramp and I have similar views on this.
It needs to be transparent so that you know what you're doing, in the sense that we understand you folks know how to spend and count it. We have to know what we're voting on when we're spending it. That's the issue I think that gets here...if it were $6 million, sir, it falls off the table. When it's $6.2 billion that's not chump change that falls off the table. That's why, when you see such large swings of money, you ask exactly where that came from. It makes perfect sense what you said, sir, but nonetheless....
Mr. Williamson is right about who has the largest expenditure: it's the operation of this government. It's on page 1.6 of the first volume. The second piece, of course, is 25.2% of the total, which includes, but is not limited to...and let me read from it:
...consists of elderly benefits, EI benefits, the Canada Child Tax Benefit and the Universal Child Care Benefit. Major transfers to other levels of government (the Canada Health Transfer...to provinces on behalf of Canada's cities and communities...).
That's a big chunk, but it's certainly not about money just to folks like my mother. It is, of course, if you count if she uses the medical system in Ontario, which she does, which a lot of us do. Then I guess that's part of the money my mother gets too. I would suggest that this big piece is not rounded up just because we have a bunch of old folks like my mum anymore. We might have a few more old folks, but they're vibrant folks, especially my mother.
If she's listening on television, Happy Valentine's Day, Mum. By the way, she quite often watches the committee when it's on TV.