Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to my hon. colleague. Having many first nation communities in my riding, what we see again and again is the absolute refusal of the government to set any kind of economic accountability or transparency within its own department. Therefore, we have seen agreements signed and the government walks away. We have seen contractors left without getting paid for basic jobs, which they were hired to do by Indian affairs.
One of the big issues is the refusal of the department to put ring fencing around project dollars, which is a basic accountability standard at any level, particularly in education, whether it is municipal or provincial. If we look at the K to 12 study or the Parliamentary Budget Officer study, the refusal to put ring fencing around capital projects meant that in 2007-08, $121 million that should have been spent on grade schools for children was reallocated by the department and blown elsewhere. Therefore, there are no standards of accountability.
Does my hon. colleague think we might get a better set of benchmarks if we start holding the department to standards of accountability, having transparency and allowing citizens to ask the department how it is spending taxpayer money and why it is moving key dollars out of such basic issues as education and spending it on lawyers, consultants and spin doctors?