Mr. Speaker, let us go back to the point of why we are here today.
I came to the House under direction from the people of Elgin--Middlesex--London to help control spending and to have a more accountable government.
As a member of this committee, I studied the process and learned how to read the estimates, which is not an easy thing. I attended the committee and I interviewed witnesses, some of them from the Governor General's office.
We did our homework and we looked at the estimates. We looked at the spending. We looked at where the spending had gone from $10 million in 1995 up to over $20 million. The Governor General's budget has exploded. When we asked for answers as to why the Governor General's budget had to explode to that level, we were told that there were a few more visitors visiting Rideau Hall now.
Therefore we did the only thing that a good committee could do and that was to say that we would have to take some of that money away.
If this is not a deficit of democracy, trying to put this back, then I do not know what is.
Could the hon. member opposite help me bring a more accountable government?