Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As a new Member here I’d like to discuss the budget process that this government is involved in. During the process, the government has introduced an act to increase the borrowing limit and we are asking the federal government to increase our debt limit. Not once during this discussion have we discussed the cost reductions in our O and M. I know this is a scary discussion, the fact that we may look at cutbacks or even to make the operations more efficient, but what is scarier is the fact that since 2000 the operations budget has doubled from $600 million to $1.2 billion. However, during this time the population has only increased by 7.5 percent and the public service only by 26 percent.
My questions today will be for the Minister of Finance about what this government has done over the past years to review the operational costs and to reduce this large, increasing rate in the operations.
I know there are a great deal of people out there that believe that we can be doing more with less. We are looking for more money from the federal government; however, if we reduced our costs by 5 percent, that would represent $60 million.
Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. The honourable Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.
