Mr. Speaker, on December 12, 2002, I asked the justice minister a question, which I would like to quote:
Parliament demonstrated its lack of confidence in the registry by removing $72 million from the scheme last week. Now the minister will be using sleight of hand to keep it on life support.
What programs will he take the money from to fund the registry?
The justice minister answered:
...I respect this parliament and as well, the notion of transparency.
Then he went on to talk about using “cash management”, but he never answered my question.
On February 18 of this year the justice minister was a little more transparent with the National Post than he has been with Parliament on how his cash management system-scheme really works. Here is how the minister explained cash management to the reporter:
[If there's] some project at the present time, [it doesn't mean] that you have to pay for your project right away. You may have to pay in just 30, 60, 90 days or sometimes more. It's not called a debt, it's cash management actually.
If the rest of us do not pay our bills, it is called debt. Only the Liberal government would try to convince Canadian taxpayers that not paying its bills was actually something called cash management.
While the minister is racking up millions of dollars of debt, has he ever thought what would happen if Parliament does not approve the spending necessary to pay those bills? It has happened before: on December 5. It has been 11 weeks now and the minister still has not given us a straight answer. Where is he getting the money to run the program? How many millions has he spent since Parliament cut off the funding for the program on December 5? How many millions in bills has he not paid in the last 11 weeks?
Now we have the little $77 million discrepancy for the minister to explain. This is the difference between what the Speaker says was actually approved by Parliament in the main estimates and what the justice department and Treasury Board officials are telling the media.
On Monday, February 17, the Speaker ruled on a question of privilege by the member for Sarnia—Lambton. The Speaker said that Parliament approved $113.5 million for the gun registry in the main estimates and that the $72 million pulled from the supplementary estimates was “additional” money.
Then on Wednesday, February 19, the Ottawa Citizen quoted a justice department official who said the $72 million was part of the $113.5 million budgeted for that year. Today, the Saskatoon StarPhoenix quoted a Treasury Board official who agreed with the justice department's version of the events and claimed that Parliament had only approved $35.8 million in the main estimates.
We understand the Treasury Board official sided with the justice department's version of events, but he had to get the $35.8 million number from the justice department and everyone knows how good the justice department is with numbers. Even the $35.8 million and the $72 million do not add up to $113.5 million.
When asked for a clarification today in the House, the Speaker said that committees of the House have the power to get to the bottom of the main estimates question.
Maybe the parliamentary secretary can clarify the justice minister's position for the record. His officials seem to have taken a public stand that is at variance with that of the Speaker of the House and the justice minister has kept Parliament in the dark for the last 11 weeks. We can only hope that the parliamentary secretary will be a little more transparent than his boss.
So I ask him, how much money has been spent for the last 11 weeks? Where is the money coming from? How much will it cost to complete the registry?