Mr. Speaker, it is true that last year's increase in the Auditor General's budget allowed the Auditor General to hire more people.
However, it is important to remember that the government, the Prime Minister, is the biggest spender in Canadian history. The Auditor General's work needs to be more and more comprehensive because more and more money is being spent. More spending means more books to open.
The government had no trouble finding $50 million to give to Mastercard. The Liberals are blithely using Canadians' credit cards without looking at what they are doing with the money being spent. They have not been able to meet 100% of the request for additional funding the Auditor General made last year based on the criteria my colleague just talked about.
Unfortunately, the Liberals were not able to respond. They did not want to respond. That did not prevent them from running a deficit of nearly $30 billion this year.
Maybe instead of talking points and a history lesson about the Office of the Auditor General of Canada, interesting though it is, my colleague should have stuck with the joke he wanted to tell me off the top rather than spouting information available to everyone on the Auditor General's website.