Mr. Speaker, I want to follow up on the theme of the first question, which is that the government keeps saying over and over again that if the budget is not passed all these spending commitments are in trouble, something that was actually refuted by the mayor of Edmonton right after the signing this weekend.
I want to ask the parliamentary secretary about one specific thing. In November of 2003, the then minister of human resources said that the government would actually put at least $6 million toward library materials for the blind across this country. The government committed to it in the next budget.
The Liberals have now put it in budget 2005 and again it is the same refrain: that if the budget is not passed and if somehow this Parliament does not keep going, that will endanger the spending. The fact is that so many of these spending commitments were made years ago and they should have been acted upon years ago.
I would like the parliamentary secretary to answer why that commitment of November 2003 was not acted upon way back when. It has not even been up for discussion.
Why does the government keep saying that all these spending commitments will be endangered? It has had years to implement them and failed to do so. The fact is that it is more the government's responsibility than Parliament's to keep it going, with the Liberals making promises on commitments they made years ago.