Mr. Speaker, my question is in a similar vein to the previous one. I know the member is an economist, but he also used to work for an organization that took every opportunity to be against higher government spending in favour of lower taxes.
Bill C-10 involves higher government spending, not the usual kind that is explicit and honestly stated, but hidden government spending. We have a situation where it may be $3 billion, or $10 billion or whatever numbers of billions of additional expenditures on prisons and the government refuses to give us any idea of what that additional cost is.
I have nothing against most of what the member said in terms of the ability of victims of terrorism to sue, that does not even cost much money, but the overall bill costs an unknown number of billions of dollars possibly ranging into tens of billions. Therefore, one might like something if it costs $1 billion, but not like it if it costs $12 billion.
How can the member possibly justify the government giving no information to Canadians on the cost of this legislation?