I just wanted to make a quick comment that I'm disappointed to see the continuing erosion of ministerial accountability in terms of reporting on the estimates. There was a time when even Liberal members would ask ministers to appear for two hours on estimates. Now, the norm has become one hour plus an hour of officials, and now they're trying to erode it further to have both ministers appear back-to-back so you lose the additional hour with officials for follow-up questions as well.
By next fall I suspect we'll have an offer of seven minutes for each minister, once every two years or something. Maybe I'm on dangerous ground even suggesting that; I don't want to give them ideas.
This is stupid, it undermines the accountability function that committees are supposed to have. It's clearly the intention of the government to offer ministers a very limited window on the same day, without the opportunity to have follow-up questions for officials. It's bad for our democracy, but there's not much we can do about it, I suppose, since committees don't have the power to summon ministers. It's a bit ironic, in some ways, that we can go all the way to the wall in demanding answers from other people, but ministers blow off tradition when it comes to accountability.
I think it's bad for Parliament and bad for democracy, but it's frankly just what I've come to expect from Liberal ministers. I want to register my displeasure and leave it there.