I will tell you why. There is a fundamental misreading on the other side about what our job is and about what politics is. Members here were not elected to come to the House so they could have a third party tell them what is right or wrong. They were elected to come to the House to use their best judgment, for them to analyse what is going on, for them to bother to read the budget and for them to offer their political opinion and their best judgment.
To abdicate that responsibility to a third party is inappropriate. You are a member of Parliament. I am a member of Parliament. It is our responsibility and to shirk it to a third party is inappropriate.
To go beyond that I have some basic concerns about giving the responsibility to the Auditor General. I have great respect for that office. I know members opposite have great respect for that office. They have often mentioned it. I would be very concerned if we undertook this bill which could very well result in the Auditor General being engulfed in partisan politics, being engulfed in the give and take of the debate, because this is a political issue.
If the government's estimates of expenditures or revenues are wrong, then the government will pay a political price. It is the job of the opposition to make the government pay for it, if it is appropriate.
The opposition was not able to do that when the last budget was tabled because by and large the Canadian people accepted it as sound. That is the difficulty. You were not able to make your case and now you are looking for a third party to make it for you. That is not appropriate. The Auditor General's office is an important one. It undertakes a number of important tasks.
Recently a private member's bill passed, which I was quite happy to see, that gives the Auditor General the opportunity to report on this House on more than an annual basis. That is an important step. It gives the Auditor General the opportunity to come to the House and comment on what the government of the day is doing.
Beyond that, there are some structural difficulties with asking the Auditor General to provide comments and assurances on financial forecasts or projections. Guidelines have been established in the accounting industry, which I much admire and in my previous life had an opportunity to work with quite closely.
The Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants states very clearly that a very cautious approach ought to be taken when passing judgment on estimates. In fact, it cautions its members to be very careful when offering that kind of opinion, I think with good reason. The institute recommends that the reporting be limited to stating that the assumptions and projection used are suitably supported or consistent with the organization's plans and that the forecasts presented fairly reflect the assumptions.
The Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants further calls for the auditor to provide a disclaimer, noting that the projections could be materially wrong if there are changes to assumptions and projections. Although members may not want to believe it, the world goes on every day and the assumptions that are made for a budget do in fact change. Indeed they change. The world changes every year. I know the Reform party has a hard time grappling with the fact that change is ongoing and that we have to learn how to deal with it.
There is another concern. What happens if the Auditor General is wrong? Is the Reform Party going to be standing in their places railing against the Auditor General as being the cause of our deficit? To suggest that, because projections are wrong and is the cause of our deficit is ludicrous. With this bill we would be suggesting that if the Auditor General makes an assessment and that office is wrong, that the Auditor General would be responsible for the deficit. I cannot buy that.
In addition, I have some difficulty with the proposed process in the sense that the Auditor General's report will come out three months later. I do not think the House is going to wait for three months before it starts to debate the merits of the budget. There is a similar bill in Nova Scotia. In the Nova Scotia experience the Auditor General's comments come with the budget. There might be some value to doing that and looking at it that way.
However, I would suggest we might want to wait until we see what the Nova Scotia experience is, take the best from it and incorporate it into this House, leaving aside those things that do not work well.