Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Nepean for his excellent question. I thank him for raising these issues.
What we are saying is that the goal was to reduce transfers to the provinces and keep more money for the federal government, but to conceal it using the mechanism of foundations. That is what former Treasury Board president Marcel Massé said himself. In order to make the money vanish from the federal government's balance sheet, it could not be under the government's direct control. That was the fundamental problem, the same problem that Sheila Fraser raised in 2005. It was very serious and very important. That was a time of budget cuts and forced austerity, when fewer services were being provided to the public. Times were hard.
There may be indirect validation mechanisms after the fact, which is what we are talking about here. For the Bloc Québécois, however, this is clearly insufficient. These foundations manage money generated from taxes and taxpayers' income tax. It is managed not by the government or by the elected members of the House, who are accountable, but rather by foundations.
The fact that there are then validation mechanisms, after all the foolish mischief is done, is clearly insufficient. This is not how taxpayers' money should be managed. That is why we are calling for these foundations, the mechanism conceived by Marcel Massé, to be abolished.