Mr. Speaker, I want to return to one of the general themes of tonight's debate, which has to do with the budget implementation vote and what that means for parliamentary accountability for government with respect to its spending.
I offered up a hyperbolic example earlier today, imagining some of the different ways the government might say it is strengthening the Canada Border Services Agency with the $54 million that is in vote 40. I suggested that it would matter to parliamentarians whether the government was deciding to hire more officers to patrol the border, to buy guns, or to build a wall. It is reasonable for parliamentarians to ask that question.
However, a slightly less hyperbolic example that gets at the same thing is that, in these estimates, the Privy Council Office has asked for about $750,000 to support a new federal leaders' election debate process. The consortium that has sometimes done the debates in the past has said that it usually costs about $250,000 to do the debates for an election, so it could do at least three elections worth of debates for $750,000. The government is projecting that it may spend $5 million next year, and we do not know if that money is for consultation, or to set up an office. We do not know what that money is for, and the PCO has said it does not know what it is for, either.
Does the member think it is acceptable for parliamentarians to be approving funding when we have no idea how the government would decide to support the goals it has stated for the funds?