Mr. Speaker, I have to point out a couple of things in the parliamentary secretary's comments.
The previous government used to have a parlour trick, in which it would look at the estimates and say that the surplus was going to be x, and it would be y. Of course it would be a lot more than it had initially predicted.
We put the Parliamentary Budget Officer in place, and we worked with the government to do that.
Now there is a new parlour trick, and actually Kevin Page identified it. It goes like this: the government does not actually spend the money that Parliament assigns. So we have $300 million in foreign affairs that was not spent, to help things like the START program to help South Sudan. We have programs that were actually needed for Canadians, and money for them is not being spent. Then the government invites us to see how well it is doing.
We have $7 billion booked in this budget that is coming out of the pockets of public servants here in Ottawa. This is some magical, great financial wizardry.
The government cannot even procure defence equipment, so it has to kick the can of $3 billion ahead.
What I am laying out here is the basis for the question to my colleague. There is no great financial management here. This budget had a lot of references to the previous budget.
How can the parliamentary secretary stand there and actually look people in the eye and say the government did a good job of managing when it cannot even fulfill the promises and expectations of the last budget, and when it cannot procure defence equipment, and when it is doing the budget savings, surplus, and deficit on the backs of everyday people?