Mr. Speaker, last June I raised the issue of out-of-control G8-G20 spending. Five months and dozens of questions later, some of the information is coming from the Conservative government, but a lot is still left unsaid.
The Thursday afternoon before the House was to rise for a week, Conservatives quietly released the expenditures of many of the contracts associated with the summits. The government finally got around to doing what we had asked for. It was pushed by the Liberal opposition in committee. I had to put forward a motion demanding all the documentation. The government came back and asked for two extensions and then made it more public.
When the government made it public, it offered a technical briefing for the media, but only for the media, and only with two hours notice.
This is the kind of accountability we have come to expect from the Conservative government. It begrudgingly gives in and provides the information to the Liberals, the media and to all Canadians that we should expect and rightfully demand from the government. It is simply unacceptable. The government should be open, accountable and transparent without reservation.
What is also unacceptable is the total cost of summit, over $1 billion, and the way in which borrowed taxpayer money was actually wasted. Let me review some of that waste: $20,000 on flowers and centrepieces; nearly $300,000 on gifts and promotional items; over $3 million on a preliminary meeting at a high-priced hotel in Lake Louise and in Ottawa; $20,000 in ice sculptures; and $57,000 on lapel pins and zipper pulls. The Conservatives have somehow managed to spend more on zipper pulls and lapel pins than the average Canadian family earns in an entire year.
We can see from this very small sample why even the Conservatives are now saying they are “spending like it is Christmas”.
Too many of the contracts awarded by the Conservatives were sole-sourced and too many of those ended up costing far more than they were estimated.
For example, Public Works and Government Services Canada estimated it would spend $172,000 on salaries and fees. In the end it spent $1.7 million. It estimated it would spend $1.8 million for leasing and operating costs of various venues and office space. In the end that number was an incredible $21.6 million. That is over $19 million more than it thought had budgeted for.
I am sympathetic to the fact that circumstances change, but it is a little outrageous. How can we count on a government that simply cannot count?
Public Works estimated it would have approximately $142.1 million in goods and services and leasing expenditures. So far, only $55 million worth of receipts have come in, and this five months later. The Liberals are still waiting on the bills for the rest of the expenditures.
A big part of the Conservative's billion dollar weekend was the security budget. The cost skyrocketed when the Conservatives told security officials, with very short notice, that they had to host a second meeting, the G20 meeting, in Toronto.
The government operations committee heard from the Chief Superintendent of the RCMP, Alphonse MacNeil, who commended the Integrated Security Unit based in Barrie, Ontario. MacNeil was unequivocal when he said, “If you do an event in one place instead of two, the cost would be lower”. He is right. That is just plain common sense.
The billion dollar question is this. Why did the Conservatives decide to hold such a high-profile, security-intense summit in the downtown core of Canada's largest, busiest city rather than find the most cost-effective solution?
We know that other countries have held these meetings for much less. Korea just did so. The U.K. and France will too. Meetings like these will continue—