Mr. Speaker, one of the commitments the Conservative Party made in 2006 was to create an independent parliamentary budget authority to provide objective analysis directly to Parliament.
I ask the Prime Minister, how is that statement and the creation of the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer in any way, shape or form compatible with the kind of cheap partisan attacks that the Minister of Finance made against the Parliamentary Budget Officer and against his observation that the job of the Parliamentary Budget Officer was to be a sounding board for the government? Does the Prime Minister not realize it is independent and—