Madam Speaker, I listened both to the minister and the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Infrastructure and Communities. I find it quite stunning that they are trying to defend spending almost $1 million on of office furniture to run this department.
It is important to not get into a lot of revisionist history here, but I think back to the time of our economic action plan. Of course the former minister of transport and infrastructure, John Baird, ran both of these ministries. He managed to get $40 billion worth of infrastructure out the door. Not only that, he did it with the Auditor General being very approving of how that program was managed, and he ran it with half the staff.
If he could run one of the largest infrastructure investments in Canadian history and he ran Transport Canada at the same time with half the staff, why does the minister need almost $1 million in new furniture and office space?