Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for giving me the opportunity to return to the issue of estimates reform, because the member is quite right. I do not think that is the opinion of just the opposition parties. In fact, it is the opinion of the government, or at least the President of the Treasury Board, that the estimates process is quite convoluted, and that opinion is shared by many people in civil society who are at the forefront of examining government spending. The question becomes how do we change it.
It was promising, initially, to see the President of the Treasury Board present a package on how we could have a better estimates process. I said in my speech, and I will say again, that as a whole package, it looks pretty promising in terms of being able to get a better system that is more comprehensible for not just us here but also for Canadians generally. However, as always, the devil is in the details. How do we implement it?
When the government says that it has this great package that has a number of reforms, most not requiring Standing Order changes and which would actually advance the cause of transparency and openness more than a simple change to the Standing Orders, but that is what the Liberals want to start with and that alone, then the issue is whether we trust the Liberals to follow through on the rest of the package. Then we go to some of the examples I raised in my speech where they have promised a two-stage reform, for instance, on ATI, but have not done it, where they promised democratic reform and launched a whole process that came to naught.
This is why we have to assess the character of the government, and when we do, based on its record, we come up with the answer that we cannot trust the Liberals to go ahead with that one little piece first. We have to have more substantive reform that comes with it.