Mr. Speaker, I find it highly enlightening that the parliamentary secretary for heritage is, first of all, accusing me of saying that I will never form government so how dare I speak about policy. But his party did form government, and what did it do? It turned around and took a campaign commitment that it made to museums to deal with the chronic underfunding and ripped up that agreement.
Then the Conservatives turn around and have the gall to stand in this House and say they are delivering value for taxpayers, the gall to hide behind the taxpayer as an excuse for the fact that they raided the museums fund. They did not raid the treasury. They knew that museums were underfunded and they took that money.
They also raided the treasury while they were at it because they took $13 billion in surplus and are putting it specifically on the debt when they could have put money into reinvestment and education. They could have put money into infrastructure. They could have put money into literacy. They raided the illiterates of this country.
My God, that man there is supposed to represent culture in the House, and I have yet to hear him stand up and defend culture. We asked for a champion of culture and, as for what we got, I will not use the words “pack of ideological buzzards” because I could be ruled out of order. What we have is a bunch of yes-men to Bay Street.