Mr. Speaker, my observation and the point I want to make is that it is clear to me at this end of the House that the democratic deficit is alive and well in Parliament.
Contrary to all the romantic ideals that were referred to in the Speech from the Throne under the new Prime Minister, the will of the MPs in the government operations committee have been disregarded, reversed and, I believe, treated very shabbily in the fact that the President of the Treasury Board is now seeking to reverse the very clear will of the committee as expressed in a democratic process where members of four political parties accurately reflected the will of Canadians to have the Governor General's budget reduced.
The only argument I have heard so far from the Liberals has been that to reduce the Governor General's budget, to ask her to tighten her belt and sharpen her pencil, would be inconvenient. It would inconvenience the Governor General for us to impose these conditions at this time.
This comes from a government that had no qualms whatsoever cutting, hacking and slashing virtually every social program in the country that we value and inconveniencing millions of people by reducing the benefits they may enjoy from those programs. Yet, by some class issue, it will not apply the same logic to Rideau Hall.
We believe the government operations committee was listening and had its finger on the pulse of Canadians when Canadians were expressing outrage about the fact that when every other budget in the country was being reduced, the Governor General's budget was spiralling out of control, growing exponentially year after year after year.
For the President of the Treasury Board to stand up now and give us an 18 minute civics lesson on the budget and estimates process and then a 2 minute defence of the Governor General's budget does not wash with me.
He also did not even mention that he was trying to put the money back into the PCO budget as well, when this was clearly a partisan use of public funds to buy a polling company to give advice on damage control coming out of the sponsorship program. That was an abuse of taxpayer money for Liberal Party partisan purposes and he is seeking to reverse that reduction today too.
Would he explain why he did not comment on that?