Madam Speaker, what a great question. I thank my colleague for it. That is one area I have not had the opportunity of talking about in my 20 minute dissertation.
Absolutely: How can we have any faith and how can there be any credibility in a finance minister or a finance department that year after year underestimates the surplus, not by dollars but by billions and tens of billions of dollars? There is no credibility left.
I think the reason why the previous finance minister, the leadership candidate from LaSalle—Émard, did it was that he wanted to keep it out of the sticky fingers of the backbenchers over there, who probably wanted to spend it on that shotgun approach that I talked about. So yes, it loses credibility in the management of the department.
It is not the bureaucrats. It is not those people. I blame this on the political masters who have tried to hide this whole transparency of the budgetary process and the surpluses that were generated. Then what did they did they do? They put it into the deficit and that is fine, but let us be honest. Of those surpluses, had they been honest with Canadians they could have given some of those surpluses back, not only in tax reductions to the Canadian taxpayer, but they could have reduced the EI payments that we are talking about right now. They could have put that back to the employers and the employees and not have them pay those exorbitant premiums in EI. Any of the surplus in the EI, which is a different pool of funding, goes into general revenues now, which again, I am convinced, is totally illegal but is happening.
The problem is the government has lost its credibility. It has lost its ability to say it is a good manager. After its 10 years in power, even the Canadian public is recognizing that this is a government totally out of control.