Business of Supply  Mr. Chair, could the minister please at least answer the simple question: How much has the Liberal government contributed to that bank so far?

Business of Supply  Mr. Chair, how much has the government paid into the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank?

Business of Supply  Respectfully, Mr. Chair, this is disgraceful. It is a simple question. We are talking about the estimates, we are talking about the budget and she cannot tell us how much money the government has paid into the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. Come on, Minister, please answer the question.

Business of Supply  Mr. Chair, when will Canada's budget return to balance?

Business of Supply  Mr. Chair, with respect, she did not answer my question, twice. Does the government have any plan to return to balance at any time in the future?

Business of Supply  Mr. Chair, no plan to return to balance. I will assume there is no future in Canada under a Liberal government that would lead us to a balanced budget. In her recent budget, the minister claimed that this was a growth budget. What specific structural investments, beyond regulated day care, has the minister made to enhance productivity within our economy?

Business of Supply  Mr. Chair, with respect, this is not a growth budget. In fact, numerous experts, including the minister's friend, Robert Asselin, David Dodge and the Parliamentary Budget Officer have all suggested this budget does nothing to position Canada for long-term growth. Does the minister agree with them?

Business of Supply  Mr. Chair, I welcome the Minister of Finance to this committee of the whole. I will get right into it just by saying this, I will not be giving a speech. I will be asking questions of the minister. The minister has just tabled the biggest spending budget in Canadian history. Many have questioned the sustainability of the massive financial burden that future generations will be burdened with.

The Budget  Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister promised a growth budget. Instead, all he gave us was bigger government, bigger debt and bigger deficits. More and more experts are piling on. Kevin Lynch, the former deputy finance minister, said that the budget missed “an urgent opportunity to rebuild our longer-term growth post-pandemic”.

The Budget  Mr. Speaker, last month, Canada lost 200,000 jobs. The recent budget was not about economic growth. It was about an avalanche of spending to re-elect the Prime Minister. Now we read troubling reports about officials who were asked to come up with excuses for millions of dollars of spending after that spending had already been announced.

United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act  Madam Speaker, I listened very carefully to my colleague's speech, and I want to ask her a question about free, prior and informed consent. Some people have characterized FPIC, as it is known, as an absolute veto. Others have said no, it is not a veto. This is of course of concern, as we have to know what free, prior and informed consent really means.

Petitions  Mr. Speaker, I have the honour of tabling a petition signed by many Canadians, who draw the attention of parliamentarians to the fact that at one time the Government of Canada used to issue a Canadian volunteer service medal to recognize Canadians who served voluntarily for a minimum of 18 months of uninterrupted service in the Canadian Forces.

Committees of the House  Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for her speech and for digging into this report and study. Earlier tonight her colleague, the parliamentary secretary, suggested that the government actually supports the recommendations of the committee contained in that report. Can she confirm whether the government supports the main recommendations of the committee in that report?

Committees of the House  Mr. Speaker, as someone who was not part of the committee, but had an opportunity to read through the report, it was eye opening and helped me to understand the environment in which our companies now are made vulnerable because of the COVID pandemic. I would ask the member to comment, to loop back to his earlier comments in his speech, about the circumstance that provided the genesis for this report.

Committees of the House  Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. My colleague just raised another point of order about the relevance of this member's speech, and now he has spent the last five minutes talking about procedure rather than the matter at hand, which is a concurrence motion on Line 5, so I would ask you to gently correct him and move him in the right direction, so we can actually have a debate about energy security for Canada.