Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my friend from the Bloc Quebecois for this array of very relevant questions.
First, I would like to tell you that I agree completely with what you said, especially concerning the accounts payable. Naturally, the Canadian government was often compared to a business; thank God it is not a private business, because if it were, either a small, a medium-sized or a large business, it would have gone bankrupt a long time ago.
What you said about the accounts payable is also true for the accounts receivable. How many millions if not billions of dollars in taxes are not collected by the Canadian government? As Chairman of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, I can say that our committee has the opportunity to analyze the recommendations made by the auditor general. Year in and year out, the Auditor General says the Canadian government lacks rigour in the collection of accounts receivable, meaning taxes, as well as in the area of accounts payable.
You talked earlier of the restaurants here, on the Parliament Hill. Recently, I read that these restaurants do not even make enough money to pay their staff. This is absolutely absurd. Basically, this is a sign of the laxness that the Canadian government has been guilty of for many years. In previous years, in collective bargaining, the Canadian government, as an employer, never stood up to the labour unions. And we are now
in the absurd situation where the revenues of the restaurants do not even cover their manpower costs. The restaurants on the Hill do not even make enough money to cover the fixed costs, let alone the variable costs.
You also talked about the $2 million it costs the Canadian government to play war for 48 hours. You were surely alluding to the William Tell competition that was mentioned here last week. Clearly, the whole defense policy must be reviewed. The Department of National Defence has a $12 billion budget. We have seen the government try to close bases here and there in Canada. That is not the Bloc's position. We think that the defence budget should be reduced by at least 25 per cent, which represents about $3 billion. The government just has to say no to these war games and to other decisions made by the generals. We know that, historically, in Canada, as in the United States and many other countries, oftentimes it is not the Minister or the Prime Minister who runs the Department of National Defence but the generals.
When the generals submit their budgetary requirements each year, they ask for a lot of what I would call military hardware to play war games. As far as I know, the Second World War ended in 1945. It is true that Canada was involved in the Korean War. It is also true that we have sent troops to several countries as part of a multinational force in the 1970s, the 1980s and the 1990s, but I do not think that it justifies a $12 billion budget today. It is us, taxpayers, who have been paying year after year for this military hardware to please the generals and other army leaders. I think the time has come for the civilians to regain control of this $12 billion defence budget.