Mr. Speaker, I have been listening for some time now to what the member opposite has to say about defence. I must say I have serious reservations about the need for such a new committee.
Earlier, some members told us how pleased they were because this is the third time the issue has been raised in the last 100 days. That, in my opinion, does not mean we will get better results. If we had been better prepared, we might have needed to address the issue only once.
Also, we have heard a lot about the way this government is doing things, about the way it consults before taking action. I agree that members should be consulted. However, when we are asked to set up a committee without knowing how much it is going to cost, we need to consider the proposal very carefully. Earlier, a member talked about the Charlottetown circus which cost, as we know, millions and millions of dollars.
What bothers me beside the costs of the project is the way they keep quoting the red book. It seems that the red book contains all the solutions needed to improve government management. If that is true, why not simply implement the red book; let the government implement it and we will be able to decide for ourselves. We might not need this committee after all, which plans to travel throughout Canada.
We also heard about cuts and streamlining measures. But what will we do? We will travel throughout Canada to gather suggestions without knowing whether we will get the money and the budget to implement them.
To sum up, I would like to ask my colleague how much he thinks this committee will cost us? What will we get from it? You have to remember that less than a week or 15 days ago, we, in the Bloc Quebecois, were suggesting that a committee be set up to review government expenditures, and that our proposal was turned down. Such a committee was not deemed necessary, because the government thought it had all the tools it needed to do that review.
I think that today the government is not looking just to set up another committee, but it also wants to travel throughout Canada to sound out public opinion. We just came out of an election. First, we should let the government implement the red book, and then, we can see what more can be done.