Mr. Speaker, I rise to follow-up on a question that I asked on April 26 regarding the government's expenditure on the Canada pavilion at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games.
I do want to reiterate the fact that these games were very successful. A number of leaders spent over a decade making sure these games would be as successful as possible. I am speaking of people like Gordon Campbell, the Premier of the province; Jack Poole; John Furlong, the chief executive officer of the Vancouver organizing committee; the athletes; and the paralympians.
This was an extraordinary moment for Vancouver, British Columbia and Canada. It was an opportunity to savour the fact that half a million people would be coming from all over the world to visit our city and country. It was also an opportunity to make the most of the fact that business people and investors would see our city, our province, and our country as a place to invest or do business.
The B.C. pavilion was an excellent example of a way to utilize that opportunity. Over 100 meetings or events with various associations and sectors of business were held there to show what Canada had to offer to a whole range of sectors.
The Canada pavilion on the other hand was a rented tent that was not even open at the beginning of the Olympic Games. It was an embarrassment. Commentators from a wide range of backgrounds were amazed that this was the pavilion which would showcase Canada and Canadians to the world.
My question back in April had to do with that tent. It contained a variety of sport video games and some videos from Parks Canada that had been borrowed from the ministry and very little else. There were some lineups to get into the pavilion but that might have been due to the fact that it shared its location with a live site and a beer tent sponsored by the city of Vancouver.
We have never received any accounting on how the $10 million was spent. The government has not been transparent. That was a waste of money. The pavilion was a very poor product for Canadians considering that the government borrowed the $10 million.
I would ask the minister to give an accounting of the $10 million that was spent on the Canada pavilion at the games.