Debates of May 9th, 2013

Opposition Motion—2013 Spring Report of the Auditor General of Canada

[John Rafferty, NDP, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened intently when the member was talking about illegal guns in Toronto. I read a statistic the other day that 70% of those guns come through the United States. Of course, border security money goes missing and is spent on other things. I wonder if she would like to comment on the $45 million, give or take a couple of dollars, that the President of the Treasury Board used from border infrastructure money in his riding, when it could have been used to patrol the border and stop some of those illegal guns.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Mr. Speaker, there are far too many parents in the city of Toronto who have seen their children murdered by illegal guns. The fact that border security services that could track down those guns are being cut is shocking. Even more shocking is to think that money that should have been allocated to track those guns down and stop them in their tracks at the border may have been spent elsewhere and could have, perhaps, saved some of those young lives. That is shocking.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today to the motion by the member for Pontiac asking for action to be taken to address the missing, remarkably, $3.1 billion.

Canadians expect their government to be good public administrators of the public purse. They expect their elected representatives, regardless of party affiliation, to carefully scrutinize spending and to hold the government accountable. Canadians expect responsible and sound fiscal management. In turn, Canadian taxpayers expect their government to use their money to provide the critical services we all rely upon.

In every circumstance, it is unthinkable that a government would be irresponsible in tracking and reporting 100% of its spending. This is all the more the case when it involves the commitment to spend $12.9 billion on public security and anti-terrorism. I feel confident in saying that Canadian taxpayers share the concerns raised by the Auditor General in his spring 2013 audit report regarding $3.1 billion of that amount not yet accounted for. This will, in all likelihood, be of concern to Canadians, as the very services they rely upon are hindered by the cuts to front-line services, including pensions and the tracking of tax fraud, for example. This is particularly galling when the government is asking Canadians to do more with less.

Some have suggested metaphorically that the Conservatives could take another look between the sofa cushions to find the misplaced $3.1 billion. All joking aside, the failure to account for this amount of taxpayers' money is a very serious matter. Contrary to what the government has alleged, the Auditor General has expressed concerns.

First, this is what he and the Assistant Auditor General had to say at the public accounts committee a week back, after determining that $3.1 billion was missing between 2001 and 2009. When asked what happened in 2010, he advised, “Our audit only went up in this time period and at the end of this time period this method of reporting was stopped”.

The Assistant Auditor General then added that “the Treasury Board Secretariat has stopped collecting data from the departments in terms of the annual reports and are in the process of putting together another framework that they hope to have in place by, I think, some time in 2014”.

That is an incredible gap in accountability.

In the text of the Auditor General's report, he stated, at point 8.24:

In 2010, the Treasury Board approved the Secretariat’s request to end the government-wide reporting requirements on Initiative spending. The last reports entered into the database are those related to the 2008–09 fiscal year. The Secretariat stated that it would develop a new mechanism for managing and collecting performance information on the Public Security Initiatives. At the time of the audit, a project was in the pilot stage, but a new mechanism was not yet in place.

That is not terribly reassuring.

Treasury Board has allowed a gap of four years in tracking spending by departments, and in such a serious and important area. The President of the Treasury Board has tried to pass the buck to the departments, saying that it is their duty to report, and besides, reports can be found in the public accounts. Perhaps he could show Canadians where, since neither we nor the Auditor General can find the $3.1 billion reported as spent or for what purpose. He has alleged that the Auditor General found no fault in the monitoring and reporting of this total committed $12.9 billion for public security spending, yet the Auditor General's report is quite clear. The Auditor General did find problems. Let me share this quote from his news release on his report. He stated:

The Treasury Board Secretariat was required to prepare summary reports for Treasury Board. The audit found that these reports were not provided. Though the Secretariat was the only department collecting detailed performance information on public security investments, it did not use this information to generate a government-wide perspective of PSAT spending and results, nor did any other federal department or agency. In the absence of any sort of overall monitoring and reporting, information to explain the difference of $3.1 billion between the funding allocated to departments and agencies and the amount reported spent was not available.

He further stated:

We believe that the government missed an opportunity to use the information it collected to generate a picture of spending and results under the Public Security and Anti-Terrorism Initiative across departments.

He then added:

The government recognizes that it needs to improve the way it reports financial and non-financial information for future government-wide initiatives.

Why is the apparent loss somewhere, possibly, of these billions an issue? As my colleagues have mentioned, there are many ways these monies could have been spent to benefit Canadians and protect our security.

There is no suggestion that addressing terrorism or ensuring national security is not important. It is important, as elected officials, that we are responsible for ensuring that once dollars are committed for that purpose, they are used for that purpose.

The government does have the power to redirect budget allocations, which they regularly do through supplementary estimates. However, there is no evidence that this has occurred in this instance.

Even more troubling is the apparent lack of policy supporting revenue sources. For instance, perhaps thought could be given to reversing the staffing cuts to the Canada Revenue Agency. As my colleague has raised numerous times in the House, we have been seriously concerned that there is $29 billion missing in uncollected taxes. Just a fraction of the missing $3.1 billion could restore the Conservatives' cuts to that agency.

We are reassured that finally, after our raising this concern several weeks in a row, the minister has agreed to restore some dollars to the agency. We are not totally sure yet whether the Conservatives have restored the audit and compliance staff. Certainly it is an important matter. Where is the action and accountability on that?

The Conservatives do not seem to be worried about money that slips through the cracks. They are more interested in cutting from programs that support the vulnerable in our society. For example, my colleague from Laval—Les Îles has brought forward Bill C-480, which would allow seniors to withdraw money from their RRSPs to advance pay their funeral expenses. The government claws that back from the GIS payments. We are talking about seniors who are living on the poverty line. That is why they need to receive a GIS. We have been proposing that at a mere $132,000, all seniors would be covered.

The government shows very little concern when it says that it is only $3.1 billion. We are very concerned about the lack of tracking of the spending of this money in the same way we are concerned that it gives short shrift to the potential for revenue generation, such as collecting taxes that have not been paid and putting proper charges on those who exploit our resources.

One area we are particularly concerned about is aboriginal affairs. In thinking that it would increase accountability, the government decided to pick on two segments of our society. They are picking on unions and first nations by telling them that they have to be more accountable and report over and over again to be accountable for every cent they spend, yet here is the government saying that it is only $3.1 billion and it is not a big deal. We might eventually find it if we pore through the public accounts.

There just seems to be an incredible degree of hypocrisy. Nowhere is that hypocrisy greater than when we come to youth.

Every member of Parliament has the privilege of taking a look at what the government will allocate for summer jobs. I have to say that it was painful this year, because more than half of those Canadians who offered jobs to students were turned down, and the government cannot be bothered to find $3.1 billion. It broke my heart to sign off on a report saying which groups would get student jobs, and all these fantastic organizations that would like to hire students, such as aboriginal organizations, the University of Alberta, and I could go on, would not. That is a whole lot of students in my riding who will not get summer employment and may not be able to continue their education.

Just in closing, I find this issue absolutely critical to our job as members of Parliament. All of us in this House, whatever our partisan affiliation, are elected to hold the government accountable for spending. I expect the Conservative members to be equally astonished and upset with the apparent lack of care and attention to $3.1 billion.

[Raymond Côté, NDP, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for her remarks, which I found very reasonable in view of what as been requested. I think her speech was just as reasonable as the motion by our colleague, the hon. member for Pontiac.

Really, we are not asking for the moon; we are simply asking to have everything we need in order to understand what happened to the $3.1 billion that has been lost in the files somewhere. That $3.1 billion is quite a large amount of money. I will talk about that in my speech later. Many families would be searching for that money and turning over the mattresses and shaking out the pillowcases to find it.

In view of the reasonable nature of the request and our experiences on different committees—my hon. colleague has seen more than I have, and it must have sometimes been hard to take—what does she think of the government's lack of transparency in this kind of situation? How far will the government go to hide questionable operations of this sort?

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for his question. It is an absolute pleasure working in this place with him. It is an equal honour to work with the member for Pontiac on the OGGO committee.

Something that is so distressing about this discovery that $3.1 billion is missing is that we in the OGGO committee, where I work, issued a report, on which we spent months upon months consulting with renowned experts from around the world on how we can make sure elected members can hold the government accountable on spending.

We made a series of recommendations on how that could come about. Mechanisms are being implemented around the world in other democracies.

What was the response of the government? Essentially it just threw the report back in our faces. It is absolutely reprehensible. This was sincere work on the report, cooperatively carried out by all parties in this House.

The response the government is giving to the missing $3.1 billion is essentially the same. It is by the same minister, the President of the Treasury Board. It is just reprehensible. This is not a small amount of money, and it was allocated for a very serious matter.

[Jonathan Tremblay, NDP, Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I was somewhat amused by the hon. member for Beauport—Limoilou's use of the expression, "we are not asking for the moon" because that is exactly what I said to myself.

We are simply asking that the Auditor General have the tools to do his job. I do not see how anyone can oppose such a motion. Therefore, I hope all members of this House will vote in favour of the motion.

My question is about transparency, which was so dear to the hearts of the Conservatives before they came to power. We have also learned recently that they have spent millions of dollars to spy on each other, because they are simply unable to talk to each other. That is the answer we got a little while ago. If they want to know exactly what is going on, they should talk to each other.

I would like my colleague to tell us more about transparency, which the Conservatives once loved so much, and about the complete lack of dialogue within the Conservative caucus.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a bit of a complicated question.

I will speak to the first part of his question, which has troubled me from the day I entered this place in 2008. The government ran on a platform of open, transparent, participatory government. In the time it has been here, it has shredded every policy and practice that could provide that. It has made the institution of government incredibly undemocratic.

If there is one obligation that it has that we had hoped it would stick with, it is the responsibility to be accountable—

[Some hon. member]

Oh, oh!

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is like a youth Parliament. I am getting reprehensible comments over here.

Every single one of us elected to this office has a main responsibility in this place to hold the government accountable for spending. What we are asking today is reasonable. What the Auditor General has asked for is reasonable. We can only hope that the government will finally respond with respect.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it is with pleasure that I rise to address the motion put forward by the New Democratic Party. I will indicate upfront that we recognize the value of the motion and therefore will be voting in favour of it.

I hope New Democrats will see the benefits of the amendment that we tried to move earlier today. The NDP motion could be made better and stronger if that party were open to accepting our amendment. I would encourage those members to think about this.

The Liberal Party has two primary concerns. The first is, of course, the $3.1 billion. The second is what we can do to fix the situation. Our amendment deals with the second one. I would encourage NDP members to look at that.

I want to start off by indicating what the Auditor General of Canada has suggested, in its entirety, with respect to this specific issue. This of course is in the 2013 audit report:

Our analysis showed that departments and agencies reported about $9.8 billion in spending by 2009, about $3.1 billion less than the amount allocated for PSAT activities. Our review of the financial and non-financial information reported by departments and agencies showed that projects were consistent with the announced objectives of the Initiative. However, information to explain the difference of $3.1 billion between the funding allocated to departments and agencies and the amount reported spent was not available.

That is a critical component of what was being stated by the Auditor General.

We need to keep in mind that we are talking about a timeframe of a number of years leading up to 2009. It is actually a total of $12.9 billion. Out of that $12.9 billion, the Auditor General was able to look at $9.8 billion. He felt 100% confident with respect to what happened to that $9.8 billion.

Then there is the $3.1 billion. Treasury Board officials would tell the Auditor General it was one of three possible situations, but we do not know for sure. One situation is that a portion of the money could have lapsed. I have asked members about that and they do not believe it lapsed. There was no 100% assurance, or even close to 100% assurance, that the money was lapsed. The government is trying to give the impression that the money was spent, but we do not know that.

The person with the best access to that information is the Auditor General. If the Auditor General concludes that he cannot find the receipts and other items that he looks at, then it would be fair to believe and acknowledge that not enough information was available for the auditor. It does not necessarily mean that the auditor did not have access to all of the information. It means that the information was not there and available for the Auditor General.

We are talking about $3.1 billion. What are the other two possible situations? The second situation is: Was the money spent on public safety activities but not accounted for? That is quite possible, but again, we do not know for sure. The third is: Was the money carried forward and spent on activities that were not related to the initiative?

Again, we will not see the Prime Minister stand in his place and give us the guarantee that, no, that was not the case. He will not stand in his place and do that because he is not in a position to really know, I believe, or he is hiding a lot of information from Canada's Auditor General, which would raise a whole new area of discussion and debate that would need to take place.

We need to recognize that we really do not know how that $3.1 billion was actually spent or if in fact it was spent.

At the end of the day, how much is $3.1 billion? When I was first elected, that almost made up the entire budget of the Province of Manitoba. Today, we would find that it does make up and exceed some provincial budgets. If we want to talk about health care services and the costs of health care, $3 billion is more than the transfer payments toward social programming that Manitoba would receive. It is a lot of money.

We are talking about tens of thousands of jobs that could have been initiated, tens of thousands good quality jobs. Three point one billion dollars is a great deal of money.

When I ask questions with respect to that or if we listen to some of the speeches given from the Conservative benches, what we will often hear is, “Don't worry. Trust us. It will materialize”.

That is not good enough.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Why not?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

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.

[The Deputy Speaker]

The amendment is in order.

It is my duty to inform hon. members that an amendment to an opposition motion may be moved only with the consent of the sponsor of the motion. In the case that he or she is not present, consent may be given or denied by the House leader, the deputy House leader, the Whip or the deputy Whip of the sponsor's party.

Since the sponsor is not present in the chamber, I ask the member for Dartmouth—Cole Harbour if he consents to this amendment being moved.

[Robert Chisholm, NDP, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Mr. Speaker, let me say that I appreciate the co-operation that has been exhibited by the Liberals, in that they are supporting our motion and they would like to try to make any changes to improve it. We are continuing to have those discussions, but unfortunately at this point we still have not reached that stage. However, I want to assure them that we are prepared to continue to have those discussions and, while we are not prepared to accept this amendment, we are hoping that, as we go forward in debate, we will be able to find wording that will be acceptable to both of us.

[The Deputy Speaker]

Obviously, there is no consent. Therefore, pursuant to Standing Order 85, the amendment cannot be moved at this time.

Questions and comments. The hon. member for Joliette.

[Francine Raynault, NDP, Joliette, QC]

Mr. Speaker, our Liberal colleague always makes fiery speeches. I would like to ask him some questions.

Why did the Liberals not take action when they were in power, after the Auditor General's 2004 report? What did the Liberals do, in 2004, to prevent the situation we are in now?

How can the member have any credibility in condemning the waste of $3.1 billion by the Conservatives, when the previous Liberal government left the poisonous legacy of its $1 billion HRSDC boondoggle, revealed by the Auditor General in 2000? Does the hon. member have an answer?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opposition deputy House leader's comments, and I hope that we will be able to work something out. If we want to send a positive message, we in the Liberal caucus believe that this is a message that is very important for us to send. Let us hope that we do not lose that opportunity.

In terms of the question that has been posed by the member, it was a significant amount of money that she referred to. The Conservatives at the time in opposition referred to it as $1 billion. However, at the end of the day, it was around $40,000 that was not accounted for. This is one of the reasons why I think it is important that we recognize where we want to go, forward from here.

We do not know what will ultimately happen with that $3.1 billion, or to what degree it will come out clean. Will it be $3.3 billion or $1 million? We really do not know yet. The Liberals would love to see it broken down at some point, the sooner the better, but at the end of the day, we have to break that into two issues.

I want to see us make sure that it does not happen in the future, which is why we put forward the amendment.

[Robert Chisholm, NDP, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciated the intervention by the member for Winnipeg North, as I often do. However, it must confound him that when the Auditor General found the missing $1 billion in HRDC when the Liberals were in government, the opposition of the day, the Conservatives, pounded them relentlessly about it being a $1 billion boondoggle, and taxpayers rightly took their vengeance out on the Liberal Party in the subsequent years. Now, here we have the Conservatives lose $3 billion, and they are trying to pretend that nothing happened.

I wonder if the member would give me a sense of his reaction or what he must perceive as the unfairness that the Liberals got chastised so badly, frankly, pounded relentlessly, for having lost $1 billion, when the Conservatives think they are going to get off scot-free in losing over $3 billion.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, one of the things I am very much aware of is the need to focus the attention on that $3.1 billion. There are some who might have an objective to try to keep down the Liberal Party. Why, I have no idea, but at the end of the day, the Liberal Party will rise.

On the $1 billion that was referred to, when it was broken down, it turned out to be around $40,000, which is still a significant amount. At the end of the day, we believe that every tax dollar is an important dollar, and we should be striving to make sure that it is being held to account for.

However, let us not lose focus of the issue today, which is to try to hold the Conservatives accountable for that $3.1 billion and to try to prevent this from happening in the future. That is what the debate today should be about.

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I would remind the House that it was not $1 billion, it was not $1 million, but at the end of the day it was in the thousands, and that was rectified.

However, my question is on what this $3 billion, when it is spread out, could do for health care. Right now we are seeing many of the hospitals having to charge more and more for parking to pay their bills. How could that money, which could be allocated to health care, help people who cannot afford to pay for parking when they visit their loved ones when they are sick?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague brings up a great point. It is one of the issues that came up.

It is another one of those tax increases from the government. This one was put on so that when a person visits someone in the hospital and has to pay a parking fee, it will be taxed. It is part of the tax cash grab from the government.

No doubt the Conservatives would not require that in the face of $3.1 billion. That is the point the member is trying to get across, which is that $3.1 billion is a lot of money. We need to recognize the value. What could be done with $3 billion? In some provinces, it would run the entire health care system. In some provinces, it would not only run the health care system, it would also provide all of the policing requirements.

It is an incredible amount of money. That is the reason we need to do as much as possible to find out where the money was spent and to confirm that it was spent in the areas to which Parliament allocated it. All of these are very important points.

[Raymond Côté, NDP, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to the speech by my colleague from Winnipeg North. I think it is reckless of him to talk about certain issues, such as the F-35 file.

I would like to remind my colleague of the fiasco of the four used submarines that cost much more than just their price tag. It was a boondoggle. Furthermore, it resulted in a man's death. That was serious.

What is more, in 2004, under a Liberal government that was a pro at flying by the seat of its pants, the Auditor General's report examined the management framework for the PSAT initiative, including all funding and expenditures. She identified weaknesses in the way Treasury Board evaluated departmental funding proposals. The Liberal Party of Canada is in no position to preach to the government, let alone the NDP.

I would like to ask my colleague a question. Is he not embarrassed to boast about things he has no business bringing up in the House at this time?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the question. I would suggest it is a little off focus, but I appreciate it.

One of the things that the member does not necessarily appreciate is that I was an MLA prior to coming here. I spent many years in opposition in Manitoba when the NDP was in government. I can tell the House that the Auditor General in Manitoba was exceptionally critical of certain budgets and accused the NDP government of actually hiding a deficit.

Where the NDP has been in government, and let us hope that it does not ever form government here in Ottawa, it has not been good. It really has not. If we want to do a true comparison in terms of governance, we will find that quite often the NDP has very strong ties that keep it down.

We will also find that it has no problem with taxation. We might talk about huge taxation coming from the Conservative government, but the NDP in Manitoba just increased the provincial sales tax from 7% to 8%. If it moves, the NDP taxes it in the province of Manitoba. We do not want to talk about—

[Some hon. members]

What is the small business tax?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, they say this is about Ottawa and they are right, but the NDP has never been in government in Ottawa. That is why we have to look at the NDP in other provincial jurisdictions. People should be careful if they are going to throw rocks in a glass house.