Mr. Speaker, the member for Mississauga South has been a good member of our committee but today I think he became very partisan in his presentation in the House.
The member talked about the fact that only 9 out of 20 committees reported the main estimates back to the House. That, no doubt, is true but why is that? The reason is that the information given in the estimates simply does not tell the story. It hides information rather that divulging information. For that reason and many others, many members of the committee simply do not see it as a useful thing to do, even though most committees do look at the estimates and do review them to some extent.
If the performance reports were being done appropriately by government they would give good information that would allow us to judge whether the government had carried through on what it promised to do in the budget, through the estimates process and so on, but they are meaningless. Interesting enough, in the performance reports no department ever does anything wrong, and we all know that simply is not the case.
I think part of the reason that many committees do not spend the time that they should on the estimates is that the information given simply does not make it a worthwhile exercise. That is wrong and that will change under our government.
The member talked about the firearms registry and claimed that no one questioned the spending on the registry. The fact is that my colleague, the member for Yorkton—Melville, on every occasion that a minister appeared on the estimates, asked the question about spending on the gun registry and the government hid the information. It did not give the information that we needed to know on that.
What is wrong with this process is that he government hides information instead of giving information.