Mr. Speaker, there are at least two things wrong with the $120,000 untendered contract that the Minister of Finance handed over to his buddy from Queen's Park.
The first and most obvious problem is that it is a gross violation of Treasury Board guidelines to give such a contract away without a fair tendering process.
Second, what kind of finance minister, what kind of guardian of the public purse, would squander $120,000 on a single speech? That is two years' salary for the average family of four. It is an obscene, offensive, cavalier waste of money. It is a wildly irresponsible abuse of the taxpayers' money and an abuse of the public trust.
When a Liberal defence minister gave an untendered contract of one-third the size to a former girlfriend, he was dropped from the cabinet and banished to the Senate.
Those guys over there are now gorging themselves on the public purse and running roughshod over all the rules and regulations that we put in place to protect us from the Liberals. The government loses all credibility. If the Minister of Finance is not hauled up on the carpet and disciplined sternly--