Mr. Speaker, the example my colleague just gave does not hold water because the Alexandra bridge he talked about belongs to the Government of Canada. What is being done on the bridge is strictly maintenance. That cannot be compared to the favouritism seen elsewhere.
Even though the G8 and G20 summits are important, the ones held in Canada last June left a bitter taste in the mouth. They seem to have been improvised and poorly planned and were terribly expensive. The Prime Minister actually missed a golden opportunity for Canada to make its mark in the world.
In addition to wasting money, Canada failed to benefit from these summits. For the first time in the history of the UN, Canada could not even win a sit on the Security Council.
Canadians did not ask the Conservatives to run up a budget deficit of $54 billion or more, spend $16 billion on possibly unnecessary fighter aircraft without a call for tenders, and waste $1 billion on a meeting of the G8 and G20 that lasted 72 hours.
How much of this mess—