Mr. Speaker, I rise to follow up on a question I put to the Prime Minister some time ago. It is worth repeating the question I asked at the time. The Prime Minister loves talking about politics, transparency and openness. However, he led the Liberals in voting against our motion calling for the Auditor General to investigate the Liberal infrastructure fiasco.
The Parliamentary Budget Officer reported on the Liberal infrastructure fiasco. He revealed that in 2017, the Liberals spent only half of the infrastructure money they had promised to invest.
In 2018, the Parliamentary Budget Officer wrote another report calling on the Liberals to release their infrastructure plan. I would remind the House that the Liberals' infrastructure plan totalled $186 billion. That is not chump change. It is a lot of money. It is Canadians' hard-earned money that they handed over to the government to take care of. Unfortunately, what was the response to the Parliamentary Budget Officer's request? What response did he receive?
It does not exist.
The plan did not exist in 2018, and we are talking about $186 billion spread across 30 agencies and departments, in over 50 programs. It is no surprise that there is no trace of the money if there was no plan and the money was scattered all over the place.
In 2019, when the Parliamentary Budget Officer asked for the list of all of the commitments the government had made in the $186-billion investing in Canada plan, the government said that it would not be able to provide the data.
The Liberals lost track of the $186 billion they had promised to invest. That is completely unacceptable. That is why the House voted in favour of asking the Auditor General to investigate the Liberals' fiasco.
Members will recall that 166 parliamentarians voted in favour of our motion, while 152 others, namely all the Liberals who were present, voted against transparency and openness, even though that was one of their mantras in all the election campaigns. They said that they would be open and transparent, that they would open the books, that they would do things differently. They are not doing things differently. In fact, they are doing worse than all the other previous governments. Members will recall that the Liberals were elected on the promise to run small deficits. They talked about a small deficit, followed by another small deficit, and another very small deficit after which they would finally balance the budget.
The reality today is that the Liberals have not only run huge deficits, but also lost track of the money they used to rack up those deficits. I am very pleased that the Auditor General finally agreed to look into the situation. He heard the call of the House and is going to conduct an investigation. We will have the opportunity to talk about that again in a few moments.
I look forward to hearing what the Liberals have to say. They are doing everything in their power to appear above reproach, but we saw that, unfortunately, when it came time to show it, they voted against the majority of the House and lost a vote. That is how a minority government works.