Mr. Speaker, I would say they spoke like true mandarins. One of the jobs of parliamentarians is to hold the government to account and it does not come as a surprise to me, and I say this without any disrespect to their careers or talent, that people who came up through government would be very trusting of government to look over its own shoulder and police itself. That is not our job in this place and I humbly submit to the member that if that is the job he wants, he is welcome to join the public service. However, in this place, it is our job to keep an eye on the government to make sure it lives up to what it says it is going to do, and we cannot do that if it does not tell us what it is planning to do with the money before we approve the funds. Finding out about it after does not work.
Let us say I am renovating my house. My contractor tells me what it is going to cost for a new kitchen, and I say, okay, and give him the money. If he says he is going to build me a kitchen and when it is done, he will show me the receipts and I will see then how it looks, I am going to say, hold on. I want input. I want to know what kind of flooring he is going to put in. I want to know what kinds of cabinets he is going to put in. I want to know whether it will have a dishwasher. Those are all things that I, as the customer, want to know and have a right to ask. I will not approve the cost for a kitchen renovation and find out it looks nothing like what I thought I was signing up for. That is the model of this budget implementation vote and it does not make sense from the point of view of financial accountability.