Mr. Speaker, the member speaks about a principle being older than the Magna Carta. In fact, the independence of the judiciary is not a principle that is older than the Magna Carta.
The Magna Carta is actually an excellent place to start. Section 100 of the Constitution Act says that Parliament makes the determination on public expenditures. That is, in fact, what the Magna Carta is all about. Section 100 deals exactly with the Magna Carta and the responsibility of Parliament to deal with the issue. The Supreme Court of Canada in two cases, the P.E.I. reference case and the Bodner case, recognized the paramountcy of Parliament in determining that issue on a standard of public rationality. It is for Parliament to make that determination.
Thirteen billion dollars is the number that my colleague has been pointing out. The priority of this government and this Parliament was to pay down the debt. That is the priority of this government. The allocation of that money obviously has to be weighed against all of the other issues that we need to deal with as a government.
I understand the member does not think that paying down the debt is important, but it happens to save Canadian taxpayers $650 million each and every year. This was not simply a matter of shifting the books as the Liberals did with the employee pension case, just shifting numbers around to create so-called surpluses. This was actual money used to pay down the debt.