Mr. Speaker, I am a hockey player and I have ragged the puck before, but I have never seen anything like this. I will get to my question really quickly.
I wonder if the hon. minister across the way can explain why, when the federal cabinet goes from 39 down to 30 and the next closest ministry has spent on renovations around $50,000 and when his division of his department is excised off from the transport minister, the transport minister did not need to spend 800-and-some thousand dollars on a newly dedicated office. When we go to the Government of Canada website and look at surplus items, $20 for chairs minimum bid, times 32, is $640; $40 for work stations, times 32, is $1,280; $100 for boardroom tables, times 10, let us say, is 1,000 bucks. He could have refurnished pretty much his entire office for about 3,000 bucks.
Can he explain and justify to the taxpayers of Canada why, when there is extra office space, with nine fewer ministries, and the surplus items are already here, available to be used, he needed to drop close to a million bucks on an office for himself and 32 people?