Mr. Speaker, I listened to the hon. member's comments and to other comments in the House this morning on the motion by the Bloc Quebecois to appoint a special committee that would carry out an exhaustive and expeditious review of all public spending by the federal government.
I do not think hon. members opposite understood the Bloc's motion. I think they are acting irresponsibly by rejecting out of hand a very responsible request, a request made repeatedly by the Bloc Quebecois since the morning of October 26, and I think the people who elected the members opposite are starting to regret their decision.
We do not want the special committee to look at everything through the magnifying glass of the Public Accounts Committee, consider every spending item and make a summary analysis. The Auditor General pointed out in his second report that year after year, the Public Accounts Committee's report was limited and fragmented in scope, because Parliament did not receive all the information it needed from the departments. That is what the Auditor General said in his report.
In fact there has never been a special committee to conduct an exhaustive study of the overlap between federal and provincial activities.
What we want is for a special committee to take an in-depth and responsible look at the very structure of public spending. If the Public Accounts Committee had been so good at streamlining and restructuring public spending, we would not be where we are today, with a cumulative debt of $507 billion and a deficit that may reach $46 billion this year.
Yesterday, I put the same request to the Minister of Finance in the finance committee, when I asked for an exhaustive review of the Canadian tax system. Incidentally, the minister answered that their priority was to examine the problems connected with the GST and the alternatives to the GST. The committee was looking at a specific and current problem-whether or not to replace the GST-instead of conducting an exhaustive review of the Canadian tax system, something we want the committee to do in addition to having a special committee on public spending.
We must realize that the public accounts committee is not able to carry out this kind of exhaustive review, especially with respect to program overlap, as the Auditor General pointed out. Take our request seriously and stop dismissing it as if this were a very prosperous and efficiently run country that did not need thorough structural change. If it was a private company, it would have gone broke long ago.