Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to answer the question put to me by the hon. member for Prince George—Bulkley Valley with whom I have had the opportunity to sit on the Standing Committee on Transport from 1993 to 1997. I want him to know that I really liked working with him. He is an experienced and serious member of Parliament, as evidenced by his question.
The Liberal government seems to forget that the money it is managing is not its own. We saw it again last week when the budget was brought down. The finance minister allocates funds for various ministers to manage. They should be reminded that the money does not belong to them. It is the taxpayers' money, the money of the constituents we are all here to represent, regardless of the party we are from or the side of the House we sit on. Canadian taxpayers are tired of always paying. They are sick and tired of paying for all this abuse and mismanagement. In focus groups, people often wonder why the public has lost confidence in politics and politicians. We should perhaps ask ourselves that question when faced with such telling examples of mismanagement.
We work hard to show our constituents that we are honest. We work in good faith. We fight hard to effectively represent our constituents in Parliament and to help them in their dealings with the government. But when people watch the news at night and compare all of this with their paycheque, with what is left of their paycheque once all the taxes, royalties and fees have been paid, they say, “It does not make any sense”.
A program which was supposed to cost $2 million will end up costing over $1 billion. Fortunately, the Auditor General agreed with us. We argued that the management of this program made no sense at all.