Someone said ”Why not?” Trust me. There is already a high sense of distrust of the government, for good reason. Have members ever heard of the F-35 and the disaster that has turned into? It is truly amazing.
Again, we are not talking about millions or thousands or hundreds. We are talking about billions. The government has to understand that we have good reason not to trust and wait for the money to materialize.
Think of it in terms of a small businessman who, let us say, sells bicycles. He might be a little depressed because of the tariff increases, a tax increase from the government this year. However, let us say that he sells bicycles and wagons. He has a good-sized business. He has allocated $100,000 in his budget to purchase bicycles and red wagons. He is anxious. Summer is coming round the corner. He knows there will be sales. He has allocated $100,000, but he finds out that only $75,000 is accounted for.
I suspect that any of the Conservative backbenchers, and possibly many of the ministers, would recognize that there is something wrong. He will want to know what happened to his $100,000 because he is dependent upon that for the future income of his business. He has an assessment, in terms of the number of bicycles that is going to be required, and little red wagons and so forth, and is expecting to be able to meet that market. There is a sense of accountability. If his accountants were to say, “I'm sorry. It's been spent, but we're not too sure exactly where” and if they cannot show the receipts for where it has been spent, I suspect that someone is going to be let go. There is no small businessman, I suspect, running a credible business in any part of Canada, from coast to coast to coast, who would accept that type of behaviour coming from his own employees.
So, why the difference? Why should the Government of Canada be treated any differently?
If we talk to our constituents, as I am sure many of us do, there are some things they have very little tolerance for. They do not like it when we waste tax dollars.
That is why the leader of the Liberal Party and many of my other colleagues have been on their feet in question period in the last couple of days, talking about things like the middle class, the number of tax increases and wasteful spending. Look at the amount of money that is being spent on advertising. People are enjoying watching a hockey game and they see one of those “blank” ads, I do not want to use any unparliamentary words so I will use the word “blank” in it place, and recognize that $90,000 is being spent on that. As an assignment over the break week we can find out if our constituents believe that spending that kind of money is in Canada's best interests.
Previously, the NDP member talked about her summer jobs program. We had our list in Winnipeg North and I went through the list. There were 60 employment opportunities for students, but there are probably another 60 that we could not give because the resources were not there. Give us a couple of those ads and all those summer students would have been employed.
That is one of the things that makes taxpayers irate, our constituents, the middle-class people who are working day in, day out trying to make ends meet, when they see that sort of an expenditure. We can understand why they would be upset at the government.
The other thing that upsets Canadians is when they feel there is no true sense of accountability, when the government says it is going to need x amount of tax dollars and the amount of tax dollars then increases. In the last four or five budgets we have seen a net increase in taxes being collected by the government. That is the reality. Conservatives can spend and pay for their advertising using tax dollars all they want, but we are seeing more and tax dollars being collected.
Canadians want to see their tax dollars are being spent smartly and that they will receive services. They want to have confidence that the government is doing a good job in spending those tax dollars. We have had ample examples over the last number of years of how the government has demonstrated its inability to be able to spend smartly. That has caused a great deal of concern for our constituents.
I made reference to the F-35. It was originally supposed to cost $9 billion, I believe. The government went out of its way to try to sell it to Canadians. I remember it becoming an election issue in my area. The Liberal Party consistently argued that yes, we do need to replace the CF-18. We recognized the importance of having equipment for our men and women in our forces. In fact, I believe Pierre Trudeau purchased the last series of F-18 aircraft, and brought that into being.
In the last federal election, we were campaigning, and we were being told that this was what was happening, that it was this number of dollars being spent. We challenged the government on that. We did not believe the Conservatives were being honest. Whether it was the Parliamentary Budget Officer or the Auditor General, all the different stakeholders came in and ultimately the government had to recognize that it had messed up.
Now we do not know where we are. Years have been lost. What is going to happen with our air force and the ultimate purchasing? Hopefully, the Conservatives have learned something from it. Canadians expect accountability. We know that there is $3.1 billion that the Conservatives need to explain.
The Liberals want to see this motion improved, and we are asking for the Conservatives to support this motion. We are also asking the New Democrats to support the amendment because we believe it would go a long way to preventing this from happening in the future. The second issue that I wanted to raise was that we want as much as possible to prevent this. What we are suggesting is something that we know Kevin Page, the former parliamentary budget officer, did support.
Without further ado, I am going to move, seconded by the member for Sydney—Victoria, that the motion be amended by adding the following. I move that, in order to avoid losing funds in the future, the House request that the government take all actions necessary to transition to program-based appropriations according to the timeline provided to the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates.