Mr. Speaker, I have been on the finance committee for quite a number of years now. The hon. member joined it recently and has been very helpful in contributing to it.
The idea of the prebudget report is generally to try to influence the finance minister and shape the budget through this report. It is an extensive process that involves a whole variety of things. I wonder whether the hon. member is a bit frustrated by the actions of the government in effectively rendering this report dead on arrival.
First, there was prorogation. Prorogation essentially took a month out of committee hearings. That is a significant period of time in parliamentary time, as we well know. That took us into October.
Then well into October we found out that on October 31 a mini budget was going to be presented. The mini budget basically blew out the fiscal space that existed and the government continued on its wild and crazy spending spree. Essentially, there was no money left over.
The effect of that was that we would not be able to report until this week. As everyone in this chamber knows, the budget is already written. There is nothing left. Even if the government had to hire very expensive speech writers, the budget is already written.
I wonder whether the hon. member would share Dr. Carty's observations, when he was recently fired, one of which was that this government seems to prefer less advice rather than more.