Madam Speaker, I would like to compliment the previous speaker on his speech, mainly because of the way he presented it. I think that ordinary Canadians who might be watching this program, I cannot imagine why they would be, but I understand quite a few do, probably understood really well what the member was saying.
One of the problems in this country is that people do not understand what is going on here or what takes place. A lot of people just do not understand what is happening. I remember when I came here as a rookie in 1993, I walked in here and got on a committee. I did not know up from down, or down from up. I did not get much clarification on estimates and all that. We had some quick learning lessons that were supposed to help us out, but I distinctly remember the first time we came in here to vote on estimates. We all sat in the House. All the government members were sitting over there and we were sitting over here, and we went through the clause by clause thing.
Will clause 1 pass? Yes, by division. Will clause 2 pass? Yes, by division. We went whoosh through all these things. We did that with the supplementaries. I got up, walked out and asked one of the older members, what happened? He said I had just spent $120 million. I did what? How did that happen? What kind of a system do we have?
I think that rookie members definitely need a clearer understanding of what the purpose of these committees are when it comes to estimates, particularly those with supplementary estimates (B). The estimates come in when there are a few weeks left for the House to sit. We might get another $1.7 billion, and in some cases $7.1 billion because someone got dyslexia. I think the numbers can be switched, but we can spend that. The attitude that a lot of governments have had forever is that if they have all this extra money, they should spend it, get rid of it because they have a new budget coming. That is a rotten attitude, especially when one lives with an operation that is $500 billion in debt. That is not even considered.
I used to get brown envelopes from people from CIDA and other places. I did not know what a brown envelope was. I opened one and thought that they ought to at least have signed it. No, they were not for that purpose. The information was to let me know about a particular group of people, 37 people, who were being taken to Argentina to study how that country was making out with its environmental work. Why were they doing it? The information said, quite plainly, that it was a total waste of money. It was just a matter of getting rid of the money, so that they would be sure to get a share of the budget the next time around. This kind of activity has to stop.
When we mention that to most people, they do not even know what we are talking about. We are so short on accountability in this place. Do Canadians understand? Absolutely not, because most of the people here do not understand. I appreciate the message and I hope that Canadians quickly come to their senses that we must have a government in power that is willing to say that every voice in this place will be heard on these committees and committees will be given ample time to do the work that I think needs to be done.
I compliment the committee, my fellow chairman and the vice-chairman who I heard today, for taking action on this issue. I think that has been a big problem for the 20 some years that I have been around. This issue must be addressed.
I compliment the member for presenting it the way he did and I compliment the chairman for bringing this motion forward. It is time that some accountability procedures were put into place, so Canadians can at least understand that when we spend $180 billion, they get some inkling of what it is all about.