Mr. Speaker, first let me thank the member for the compliment. Let me return one to him because of the hard work he does. We know he speaks out on issues freely, rather than following the government line. My compliments to him also.
Every year when the Auditor General appears before the committee on her estimates, I always ask if she has the money required to fulfill her mandate. If she ever has a problem, she knows she can come to the committee and we will go to bat for her with the President of the Treasury Board. We will go head to head with the president on that issue.
Most definitely there is a democratic deficit right in the House. The House does four, simple, fundamental things. It approves the legislation requests of the government. It approves the taxation policy for the government to raise the funds it requires. It approves the estimates that the government wishes spend and the government reports to us. Those are the four things that we do in the House and we fail miserably on most of these things.
When the government wants legislation we roll over and say, “Whatever you want, you will get”. When the government introduces a taxation policy that squeezes taxpayers even more, we roll over and give it what it wants. On the estimates, the Auditor General points out that we are kept in the dark, but we give them to the government anyway, and it reports to us. What more can I say than thank God for the Auditor General of Canada.