Let me address the issue of covering the cost of planning.
Now, obviously, whenever the government, by authority given in the House of Commons, is about to engage in a particular enterprise, a particular project, it has to address the issue of costs. All of us, as responsible parliamentarians, want to know that things are affordable, whatever project we're talking about. The cost of planning a project is inherent in the overall expenditure plan that the government puts when it plans to do something.
We know, Mr. Chairman, that the government, through its backbench MP, presented this bill initially. Only now are we being asked to take a look at the cost of planning. But there is no business plan presented to us--none whatsoever--with this amendment. There's no indication of how much it will cost for the land, how much it will cost for the erection of a monument, how much it will cost for the maintenance. In fact, we don't know the scope of what is planned because we haven't even got it to the point of the design phase. So what is the cost of the design phase, and what cost is the government planning to offload onto the council?
Remember that the House of Commons said that in principle, this is what we want. There was unanimous agreement in the House of Commons by all parliamentarians of all parties that the costs would be absorbed by the House of Commons, by the Parliament of Canada. Now there's an amendment in which the government says, “No, we want the council “to cover the cost of planning”—without a business plan—“designing”.... Can you imagine?
We don't know whether they're going to do a national or international competition to get people to make—