Madam Speaker, first of all, I find it truly ironic that in this budget the Liberals are taking credit for indexing the Canada child benefit. They had not originally intended to index the benefit, but the parliamentary budget officer's report forced their hand.
He indicated that by 2020 or 2021, the Liberal program would be less generous than that of the Conservatives. The same afternoon that the report was released, the Liberals announced that they would index the benefit starting in 2020 or 2021. I would have liked the government to be a little more forthcoming and at least admit that they made a mistake and that they had forgotten to index the program, which will obviously increase the cost of delivering it.
I would also like to follow up on an issue that was not mentioned by the parliamentary secretary in his speech, and that is the privatization of Government of Canada assets. Yesterday, in committee, Dominic Barton, chair of the Advisory Council on Economic Growth, did not deny that the government is moving toward privatization.
Could the member explain why he did not mention this in his speech? Could he also tell us when exactly during the campaign did the government talk about privatization?