Madam Speaker, I know the member is new to the House but by now he should understand that members should be accurate in their statements.
The member said that the surplus was higher than it should be because of the $7.7 billion that have been put into the foundations. What he did not say is that the Auditor General herself is not of the opinion that the money has not been properly accounted for in the public accounts.
The Auditor General is in agreement with how the money has been accounted for. It is improper for the member to suggest that somehow these amounts should have been recorded as expenses and they were not. That is not the case and the Auditor General confirms that.
Second, the member says that we need the Auditor General to protect taxpayer dollars and how they are spent. As the former chair of the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates, I can say that each of these foundations has a contract that lays out in very explicit detail what it must and must not do.
These foundations are all subject to audit. They are all subject to report to Parliament. They all have clauses stating that if the money is not fully used once there mandate is over then the money goes back to the government.
I simply say to the member, with the couple of examples that I have given, that rhetoric is fine but there should be some basis in fact of what the member is representing. Unfortunately he has in his speech mentioned a couple of items which are simply not the case.