Mr. Speaker, the one thing that has not been said here today and that needs to be said is that there was a great deal of cooperation on the committee when we were studying this issue of gender based analysis and gender based budgeting.
The report was adopted unanimously, with two footnotes put forth by the Conservative government. One of those footnotes addressed the issue of a commissioner, which is what the motion is today and which is what I would like to address.
We heard from a lot of people that there are a lot of different issues out there. We heard from many witnesses that finally we are starting to see some movement on improvements in the gender based budgeting issue.
It has taken a long time. Governments have worked on this in the past but have not been successful. Members of the committee need to be commended for the way they worked together, which is one of the reasons that we are starting to see some movement on this issue.
The footnotes were put in place on behalf of the Conservative government because it is a premature issue. We do have an avenue whereby we can examine what is being done with the gender based budgeting in this government and we can do that without putting a commissioner in place.
A commissioner of gender based budgeting would create a new bureaucracy that we feel is premature at this time. Other avenues can be explored. The Auditor General said that she and her department would be quite willing to do an audit on the gender based analysis that is being done. We feel that we should be waiting for that report to come back before we go to the extent of appointing another officer of Parliament. It would come at tremendous cost, which, I might add, has never been investigated fully, and it would come with a great deal of bureaucracy.
We would rather see the dollars in our programming go toward helping women, which is what the department is for and which is the initiative that we are trying to promote. We are trying not to promote bureaucracy in a cumbersome system. We are trying to get the dollars directly to the women who need them, which is why we, as the Conservative government, would like to wait to see what the Auditor General's report indicates.
The Auditor General has indicated that we will not be waiting for two to three years for the report. This report will be done in the near future.