Madam Speaker, I am here today to raise an issue of great concern to me.
Yesterday in the House, a majority of parliamentarians adopted a motion calling on the Auditor General to conduct an investigation into the $186.7-billion investing in Canada plan presented by the Liberal government in 2016. This plan was slammed by the Parliamentary Budget Officer many times for its lack of information for Canadians and for the government's inability to keep track of the millions and billions of dollars in investments it promised to make in various projects.
To us, this is absolutely important. Members will recall that, when the Liberal government was first elected in 2015, it promised to invest in infrastructure to get Canadians back to work and to grow the economy and our GDP. Unfortunately, that did not happen and these investments in infrastructure were being made with borrowed money.
In 2015, they announced small deficits of $10 billion, $10 billion, $6 billion, a little less than $3 billion, and then a return to a balanced budget. Today, we are at $26 billion in deficit spending for this year alone.
What is more, the Parliamentary Budget Officer says there is no infrastructure plan. How can anyone tell if a plan is good when there is no plan? That is why we asked the Auditor General to do this analysis and look into the plan.
Last year, the Auditor General announced that he did not have enough money to handle all the necessary audits and oversight. We are concerned that the Auditor General might not have all the resources he needs to carry out this new mandate from the House of Commons. That is why we are asking the government for assurances that he will get the resources he needs. The Auditor General says he is several million dollars short of being able to complete all of his performance audits.
We want the government to make the money available. Maybe the government could get some of the money from the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. The government pledged tens of millions of dollars to the bank so it would look good on the world stage. The government is still sending tens of millions of dollars to the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank even though China has closed its borders to canola, pork and beef imports from Canada.
Here in Canada, the Auditor General is complaining that he does not have enough money to provide oversight for all government activities. Given that Canada does not have good relations with China, we believe that it is perfectly reasonable to take the money that is supposed to be invested in the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and give it to the Auditor General so that he can investigate how infrastructure money is spent and invested right here in Canada.