Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise tonight because it gives me an opportunity to totally refute the member's assertion.
The Minister of Canadian Heritage and Status of Women followed all of the Treasury Board guidelines. In fact, I would like to take this opportunity to set the record straight.
In a one year comparison of proactive disclosure, it is clearly shown that our government takes seriously its responsibility to Canadian taxpayers.
In terms of hospitality and travel expenses, the former Liberal minister of Canadian heritage spent $182,693.96 in 2005. In 2006 the current minister's office just spent over $82,000, a difference of $100,000 more than the current minister spent. We are getting the job done at less than half the cost.
I would also remind the member opposite that it was the former Liberal heritage minister, Hélène Scherrer, who hopped on a Challenger jet, flew to Calgary, rented a limo for her jaunt to Banff where she delivered a purely partisan political attack in the middle of an election campaign, and that too was all at the taxpayers' expense. That was not bad enough. The Liberal minister decided she did not want to travel with her staffer, so she rented a car for her to get her back. Access to information requests on the cost of the Challenger trip for the Liberal minister's Banff bonanza came in at over $23,000.
In fact, when we talk about proactive disclosure, let us not forget why this policy had to be instituted in the first place. It was because of the Liberal sponsorship scandal. The current government has instituted the most sweeping accountability reforms in the history of the country because members of the party opposite could not keep their sticky fingers out of the cookie jar.