The material is always fresh, Mr. Chairman, and I accept the intervention of colleagues. They probably suffered under the mistaken impression that perhaps I was tiring in my energy, and so just to give them an opportunity to think of themselves as having fulfilled something of benefit, I can now assure them that, no, I was not tiring, but that the added moment of freshness in the air is probably going to generate even more energy about a topic on which we should all speak with passion.
I apologize to my colleagues from the Bloc who thought my command of the English thesaurus was more limited than they had expected of me, and I'll try to live up to Le Petit Robert and Larousse, etc., if I can, in order that the repetition not fray any nerves.
But it's important to keep in mind, Mr. Chairman, that repetition is the soul of integration. In fact, if you repeat, yes, in repeating the concept we drive home the point, and the point is still the one I was talking about a moment ago: first, whether it was will, public will, public reflection, public involvement; secondly, whether it was a question of moneys--and we have clearly dealt with the issue of moneys not being the issue.
It must be something to do with authority: in other words, whether the Government of Canada could have, should have, must have the authority to put this forward. Mr. Chairman, colleagues all know that the authority is vested in the cabinet and exercised through the various ministers. Now, the only way that any community—whether it is the Jewish community, the Italian community, the Hungarian community, any community in Canada—can know that the Government of Canada, the people of Canada, side with them is if a minister of that cabinet, a minister of the crown, an administrator of the authority of the people, can actually speak on their behalf. A minister did. The Prime Minister did. The member who presented the bill, when questioned here before this committee, said yes, he had not only consulted the Prime Minister and the cabinet and the minister responsible, but he'd gotten their approval. They've gotten their approval. Can you imagine? The Prime Minister and the cabinet said yes, the bill is great, and they supported it. Everybody supported it.
But then the Prime Minister and the cabinet and the cabinet minister responsible for this pulled themselves back, apparently. So now we're looking at something like this. This particular item says “No, no, it can't be the minister, it can't be the government, it can't be the Prime Minister who is going to incur the costs of covering the planning, designing, construction, installation, and maintaining of the monument. No, it can't be the Prime Minister. It can't be the Government of Canada. It can't be the people of Canada. It has to be somebody else”.
Well, let's pick some people. We'll call it a council, but it can't be the people of Canada. It can't be the Prime Minister. That's what this amendment says. I can't imagine that the government would promote an amendment that would cast such aspersions on the will of its own Prime Minister and cabinet minister.
When the cabinet minister stood before this committee, he was sitting right there by number 18, Mr. Chairman, and I asked him if he was still committed to this. He said there was no doubt. I asked if he was willing to give a royal recommendation in case there were costs associated with this. He said there was no doubt. Well, I don't know who speaks for this government or for the people of Canada anymore. There's no doubt, apparently, that the minister wants to cover the expenses, wants to exercise his authority. There's no doubt. There's no doubt that they will cover all the financial considerations because they're prepared to give a royal recommendation. And the government members opposite present an amendment that says, “No, we don't want to do that. It costs too much money.” We don't know. Nobody's every asked for an estimate. Nobody has done a feasibility study on this. Nobody has looked at the design projects. Nobody has conducted a national campaign to find out who's interested, which architectural firm, what's going to be done, and where it's going to be done. Nobody has done that, so we don't know what the cost is.
Members opposite must know the costs, because they're saying they want the council to cover all this. We don't know whether it's $10 or $10 million. It doesn't matter because it's all the same to them. That $10 or $10 million is going to break the bank. It's going to ruin the finances of a government that has $255 billion in expenditures. Can you imagine that?
Well, we can't imagine that. We can't. We have to take all of our colleagues at face value. When they presented this particular bill...and I'm going to ask my colleague from Mississauga—Streetsville or my colleague from Newton—North Delta what their understanding might be when in the House they voted for something completely different, i.e. that the minister would be responsible and that the minister accepted that responsibility.
Now think about this—just to change topic for a moment; the word “responsible” is there for a very specific reason, Mr. Chairman, and that specific reason is that we live in a parliamentary system that says the government is responsible—responsible—and accountable to the people for everything it decides.
So here, now, is something novel: the government members are presenting an amendment that says the minister can no longer be responsible.