Mr. Speaker, I thank the member from the Bloc for describing the balance of the things that might have been done with some of this money.
We hear commentary back and forth across the House about whether one needs to be an expert or not. I suggest that members of Parliament, with the advice they get, are called upon to study many different issues. No one has to be an experienced person for any given one of them, especially when we look at the numbers for previous summits that have been one-third or one-half of what this one is proposed to be.
I submit that the government had choices to make in the budget. It made the choice to be so far out with this amount of money that it is almost unbelievable. There are so many other things it could have made choices on, such as putting $1 billion or $700 million toward seniors living in poverty, increasing the GIS and other things that have been proposed in the House.
It comes down to those choices, and I thank the member for proposing some of the alternatives.