Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate the opposition for addressing the matter of whether or not we should set up a separate committee for finances.
I remind the hon. member that he said he was trying to eliminate duplication. The very nature of what he is proposing actually is duplication.
There is no question that the Auditor General's report is a significant document. I hope every department will use it as a tool to try to get rid of those deficiencies as alluded to by the hon. member.
Canada is a Confederation, not a unitary state. As the member put it Canada is not a country of states that do not care for one another. Those provinces that are doing quite well assist the other provinces through equalization payments and so on. This is unique. We enjoy a good status in the world. We are respected. We enjoy a high standard of living. Our kind of democracy and our kind of government are examples for many countries.
To separate or to tear the country apart is the subliminal message coming from the members of the opposition. It is probably not a very good way. I can say that quite firmly coming from a country where independence was achieved. After independence our standard of living went down and was not as good as we thought it would be. We ended up with a great deal of enemies. We thought they were not our enemies but economically they were bigger and forced more kinds of restraints on us.
To get back to the question we are debating today, we do need to look very seriously at government records and the way it spends its money, but the mechanism is already there. We have government and opposition members to do this. That is the mechanism we should be using in order to achieve those goals.