Mr. Speaker, I too would like to speak in support of this amendment.
The amendment by the hon. member for Malpeque speaks to something Canadians find increasingly frustrating in dealing with governments. It is this idea of a lack of accountability or the lack of the proper procedure. All members have a huge volume of estimate literature in their offices which, except perhaps for the people who wrote the documents, is hard to understand.
The motion is straightforward. It is a very sound idea which has a good deal of common sense. It just asks that a report be filed from the department to address the very concerns people have about the estimates and the fact that they are so difficult to understand.
At the Reform Party convention this past weekend we passed a motion that we would like the government also to follow up on this whole idea of a standardized accounting practice as recommended by the Auditor General. That would make this whole effort more understandable in its entirety. As a first step, this amendment is plausible, very realistic. It should receive support from all sides of the House.