Mr. Speaker, I talked about the priorities and what other things we could be spending this money on, such as keeping the prison farms open, or setting up sexual assault centres, or have a victims ombudsman, as suggested twice to the government, which would cost under $5 million a year. Children who are the victims of sexual abuse could have a place in every major urban centre in the country to go to. That was turned down by the government.
Here are the questions Canadians want answered. Why is this costing so much? Why are we holding two meetings in 72 hours in two locations? Why are we not using a much easier to secure location? Why are there no post-Olympic sufficiencies being seen in these numbers? Why the deceptive estimates?
New Democrats will continue to work very hard to get to the bottom of these questions, so we can get those answers to Canadians and let them judge whether the Conservative government has been prudent with their tax dollars and whether they think it is justified to spend $1 billion for three days worth of meetings in June.