Mr. Speaker, you indicated that the matter was not before the House. The matter is before a parliamentary committee, the government operations committee, which is a creature of the House of Commons. The matter has been presented. The estimates were literally tabled in the House of Commons, right here across from me, by the President of the Treasury Board. In other words, the matter is very much live, and it is very much appropriate for the member to raise a point of order with respect of it.
I know that member probably has some policy objections to items in those estimates, but I did not hear him make any of those objections. He was focused exclusively on the procedural element and on the Standing Orders and the traditions and conventions that date back hundreds of years when he was making his case.
Therefore, it is not accurate to suggest that he was engaging in debate. There was no debate whatsoever about the policy substance of the estimates. His point was exclusively about whether those estimates provided enough information for Parliament to carry out its legitimate duty in executing the power of the purse.
The most fundamental rule of public finance in our parliamentary system is that the government cannot spend what Parliament does not approve. The member was making a point of order specifically on whether the presentation of the estimates, which gives authorization for any non-statutory spending, was done in the proper form. That is very much a point of order.
We are talking about the expenditure of $7 billion. The hon. member chose a quiet Friday, out of respect for the work of Parliament, to raise this issue. It seems to me that he has taken the least disruptive possible approach to making his procedural case on this point. He was in the process of making that case prior to the Chair entering Parliament into orders of the day. We, as parliamentarians, should hear this argument, and we should hear it in its entirety.
It is not reasonable to expect he could make that—