Mr. Speaker, I want to raise something that troubles me about this budget. Unfortunately, I was not able to present a full speech on the 2015 budget due to the difficulty of finding a speaking slot that did not interfere with the national Holocaust remembrance.
Had I had the opportunity, what I wanted to say was that we have lost track of a fundamental principle of parliamentary democracy, which is that Parliament must control the public purse. Increasingly, budgets have become big thick brochures for a government in power, particularly under the current Conservative administration. We no longer have the index at the back of a budget that actually shows us what each department gets to spend, how it compares to the previous year, and how it compares to years going forward.
We have absolutely no idea for this budget what the funding would be for international development assistance, what the funding would be for Fisheries and Oceans, or what the funding would be for Parks Canada. Indeed, no departmental spending is detailed here, so parliamentarians are essentially voting on a pig in a poke.
If we respected the principle that Parliament controls the public purse, none of us should vote, because none of us have accurate information.