Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to the speech by the President of the Treasury Board and I noticed that he congratulated the members of the committees. There seems to be a certain lack of logic: he congratulates them on their work and then asks for a decision by the committee on the Governor General's budget to be reversed.
It is important, for the purposes of this debate, that we are clear about the proposal, which is to cut 10% of the budget for the last three months of the year. Accordingly, this is simply 0.1 of three twelfths of the year, which is 2.5% of the budget for the whole year.
As for the Governor General, it is true that in years past we have noticed some needless expenses. I think the committee wanted to send a clear message that even in the current work for the current year a bigger effort needs to be made.
I am having a little difficulty understanding the attitude of the government and the Treasury Board when they say they are going to reverse the committee decision. This attitude fuels the democratic deficit that this government said it wanted to eliminate. The majority of committee members, including members of the government, voted in favour of this cut—a cut that is not draconian. It is essentially a warning we want to send to say that there is room for more cuts to the Governor General's overall budget. I think a special effort could be made.
Why has the government not decided to accept the proposal presented by the members and the committee and cut the yearly budget by 2.5%?
I think that the Governor General could find ways to save money not when she is handing out medals and things of that nature, but in her daily operations and administration. I have a really hard time understanding why the government did not receive this amendment as constructive and as an indication that MPs can have a measure of control over defining the budget.