His best gamble would be to act like Jimmy Swaggart and prostrate himself before Canadians and beg their forgiveness. That is what I would advise him to do, but in all likelihood he probably intends to try to defend the indefensible.
Were we able to question the Prime Minister on any one single thing that we have found failing in the time we have spent here as members of Parliament and as members of the government operations committee, we would have to say to him that the notion of transparency and accountability has not been the reality in my experience.
I am sad to say that, because I believe most members of Parliament want to do a thorough job. They want to represent the interests of the people who sent them here. They want to be aggressive watchdogs of public spending. But we do not have the tools to do that unless we pass the motion as put forward by my colleague today, which is the report of the House of Commons standing committee.
In question period today, the member for Elmwood—Transcona, a man who is the dean of Parliament and has the respect of Parliament, stood up and chewed out the Prime Minister for, in his mind, the failure to act on the democratic deficit by ignoring the will of Parliament in situations just like this.
The member for Elmwood--Transcona cited four or five examples where we have moved concurrence in a report of a committee and passed it in a majority vote of Parliament, directing the Government of Canada to do a specific thing. The Air-India inquiry is one example. The motions then are ignored as if they were just minor irritants, just another thing to get through in a busy day.
When Parliament speaks, government is supposed to listen. Government is supposed to implement the will of Parliament. Otherwise, there is no respect for Parliament and we are just wasting our time here.
I raise this only to emphasize that when we finish this debate today on this concept, this notion put forward in good faith by a unanimous vote of the government operations and estimates committee, that when we are finished debating it for three hours today, it comes to a vote. If the vote of concurrence passes, as I expect it will, the Government of Canada will ignore that vote at its peril.
If the Liberals decide not to implement the will of Parliament in this, which is yet another example, then going to the nation tomorrow night at 7:45 p.m. and begging for forgiveness is not going to help them. They will be doomed. I predict that the wrath of Canadians will be upon them, certainly the wrath of those representatives of Canadians who make up the House of Commons. We will do it for them. If the Canadian people do not have a chance to tell the Liberal government what they think of it, it is up to us to tell the Liberal government what we think of it and we will do that at every opportunity.
As the vice-chair of the government operations and estimates committee, I support my chair, the member for Vegreville—Wainwright, in his efforts to drive this message home.
This is perhaps the shortest report that I have ever seen from a parliamentary committee. We wanted to keep it simple. We did not want to cloud this issue with unnecessary language. We did not want to mix issues. This is a single message. It is not pluralistic in any way. It deals specifically with the length of time we should be given to review and study the supplementary estimates when they come before our committee. Nothing could be more straightforward. The figure that we agreed to at committee and which is in the report is 21 days' advance notice. That is not too much to ask for a billion dollars worth of spending.
We are not talking about 21 sitting days of our committee. We are talking about 21 calendar days, during which time the committee would have had perhaps two or three meetings but during which time researchers and people working on our behalf could develop material and opinions for us to be able to do our job properly and make sound and wise judgments.
In my closing minute, I urge my colleagues to look favourably on this motion, to speak in favour of it and to restore the confidence of the Canadian people in how somebody around here cares about how their money is being managed. I would like to think that we in this chamber do and there is a way to demonstrate that: support this motion.