Mr. Speaker, the finance minister likes to say that the federal government led by example when it came to reducing the deficit but the problem is that is just not true.
Departmental spending is $8 billion higher than the finance minister promised it would be.
The Liberals promised with their program review that they would reduce departmental spending by 19 per cent, but so far, as the minister knows, it has only gone down 9 per cent. This probably qualifies in his department as an "oops". That is a huge difference.
My question is this. Why does the government find it so difficult to tighten its own belt by $8 billion when it did not bother it a bit to slash health care and education by $7 billion?