Mr. Speaker, let me deal with the first part. I congratulate all committees in the House for being quite responsible in the approach to the estimates. They had an opportunity to deal with all of the estimates and chose to go into this area.
There are two parts to my concern. When I put forward the estimates, I did it after a great deal of work and diligence. They represent the most accurate and best estimates of the government for the work that it needs to do. It should not be a surprise that I would want to defend that. I would not have put them forward if I did not believe that in the first instance.
If we were to run through the math in our heads on this first estimate, it sounds like 10% represents a pretty big cut overall. However, one could argue it is only 10% in the last quarter. The problem is that in any kind of management situation a very large quantity of money is tied up in staff. Had we been in the normal estimates cycle, talking about this in June and we had three-quarters left to adjust, a 10% cut would be a different thing, but when we are doing it in the last quarter, we cannot turn around for a contractual reason and just fire everybody tomorrow.
Even if staff is reduced to take it out, it is going to take a bit of time to do that. In the meantime, given that there are only three months to implement this cut, an awful lot of activity is going to be cut. It sounds simple, but it plays out in a more complicated way. Am I adverse to the government accepting the advice of a committee? No. I moved cuts, as everyone knows, when I was chair of the committee and the government in fact accepted that.
There are two things involved here. I was not given the privilege of an opportunity to debate this at the committee level. I was not aware this was going to happen in committee. It was not arranged with me, otherwise I would have made some of these arguments then. The logic of doing it relates to activities that took place some time ago. I believe the Governor General and the government have responded in a very positive way regarding the concerns that were made.
The nature and size of the cut, and the timing of the year is a problem. I think a smaller, more symbolic cut might have done the job. I think this one is going to create legitimate problems in the operation of that office in the last three months.