Mr. Speaker, let me deal with the three part question that the hon. member proposed.
The first is the question of the democratic deficit. I think he just misunderstands it. The reality is that committees are, as we always call them, creatures of the House. Committees provide advice to the House but it is the House that makes the decision, not the committee. It has always been thus. It is this way with legislation and it is this way with estimates. There is no diminution of democratic rights. In fact, there is a substantial enhancement of them given the fact that this is a minority government. It comes back to a minority House to make the decision. I think it is an unfortunate mischaracterization of what is going on here.
Think of the reverse. It is not uncommon in the House for a committee to make a report on a piece of legislation and for members of the House to stand and say that they disagree and to put further amendments forward. This is exactly what is happening in this case.
There is another piece to this, frankly. We might have had some of this debate in the committee if the committee had chosen to invite me back to talk about it. I could have put the same concerns on the table. The reality is that one couches this in the language of a cost saving-cost cutting exercise, the same as everybody else has been subjected to, but the reality is that it is a 10% cut in the last quarter of the year. It is simply a difficult thing to do. We do not do that with anything else around here. This would cause serious problems in a very short period of time.
The committee may be satisfied with that being an acceptable solution but I do not think it is. I believe the House has a right to debate that and in the end make a decision. I think the message that was sent was poorly constructed. Another time we might want to debate that.
As far as the other item regarding the PCO money, as soon as that motion comes up I will stand and argue that one also.