Madam Speaker, I appreciated the speech given by my friend from Athabasca and his honesty.
Earlier in his speech he went through a long list of about $1 billion worth of items such as upgrading museums, gala events, and so on. Those were totally questionable expenses. This money was obviously used in ridings where the Liberal candidate was vulnerable to losing so votes had to be bought and so the Liberals poured $1 billion into those ridings. I wonder if taxpayers are aware that the government spends this kind of money. It is an absolute shame.
We should be able to come to this place and ask those people over there what the devil they think they are doing. The government has spent $1 billion of taxpayers' money to do things like having a magazine in Saskatchewan for the finance minister and some festival somewhere else.
The Liberals have spent $1 billion and in the meantime people cannot get through waiting lists in hospitals, students cannot repay their loans, and people that were harmed in the forest fires in British Columbia did not get a penny. Soldiers cannot get the kind of equipment they need to carry on with their missions. People in Alberta have suffered through droughts and beef problems, and have not received a penny. Yet the Liberals have spent $1 billion just before an election to buy votes. I sure hope Canadians wake up to this kind of thing.
Does the member for Athabasca believe that when that kind of spending goes on by a government in charge, we ought to be able to come in here as an opposition and throw those members out bodily if nothing else. What kind of nonsense is this?
When I was the mayor of the town of Sundre, if I dared spend a nickel in that fashion, without having it accounted for and budgeted well in advance, and if there was a little contingency fund, it definitely went toward high priority needs, not toward giveaway fuzzy, fluffy, namby-pamby stuff.
I would like the member to comment on how I feel about this. We ought to be able to attack those people for throwing $1 billion away on very low priority projects. Who do they think they are that they can take taxpayers' money and do those kinds of things?