Mr. Chair, I will give a brief statement, followed by questions. I will be sharing my time with the member for Calgary Forest Lawn.
Canadians are generous, so we are welcoming the refugees who will be getting off the plane as permanent residents and they expect Parliament to debate important questions of the day, including whether the government has a plan to do this well and allow the resettlement to be successful. That is what we all want.
The sense we have on this side of the chamber is that this is a plan made on the fly and that could lead to poor outcomes for new members of the Canadian family. We only need to look to the Liberal Party platform that the Prime Minister refers to every day in question period to see Liberals changed their plan in the election.
In their first statement on the subject, the Liberals allocated $250 million in their platform for the Syrian processing resettlement; $100 million this year for processing and settlement; $100 million as a new payment to the UNHCR. Then in another document, in the same election campaign, they allocated $200 million for the same program. Part of that $200 million was again the $100 million in new funding for the UNHCR or relief work.
Whether we take it as $300 million or $250 million, Liberals' plans were different even during the campaign. One thing was constant. They were going to have a new payment to the UNHCR for relief efforts related to this tragedy.
In the Liberals' November 9 press release, once again the new minister said: $100 million for processing; $100 million to the UNHCR for relief. In supplementary estimates we are debating today, $277 million spent; $177 million for operational expenditures; and $99 million for grants. There is no mention of that $100 million in new spending for UNHCR.
Why is this missing from the supplementary estimates?