Senator Gold: Thank you for asking that question, but I’ve answered it many times. I’ve listed the historic levels of investment that this government has made in augmenting our capacity in the North, whether it’s with regard to fighter jets, helicopters or fixed-wing search and rescue aircraft. As I recall — and it seems some months ago — I also provided this chamber with a historical overview of the increases in defence spending that this government has put into place as compared to previous governments.

Senator Housakos: Thank you, Senator Loffreda, for expressing very eloquently the government’s point of view as independently as you might have done. I will, independently of course, ask some questions on behalf of taxpayers in this country — starting with the fact that we saw the Auditor General put out a report very recently calling into question $27.4 billion of COVID spending that you allotted the government. Of course, we participated in getting a lot of that COVID spending out the door very quickly. Clearly now, the Auditor General has questioned the transparency of a lot of that spending.

What in this bill — what mechanisms — and what action has the government taken to make sure that a lot of the programs you just highlighted, and a lot of the new spending that will be taking place, will have better checks and balances than, clearly, the previous couple of budgets that we approved?

Senator Loffreda: Thank you for the question, Senator Housakos. It’s very relevant as, in my previous life, I was an auditor — way back more than 20 years. I started in 1984. How many years is that? I lost count. It’s 38 years, right? So it’s over 20 years.

But I think what does matter here is there are a lot of measures that are there for tax avoidance. A lot of measures are there to show that fiscal responsibility is imperative. I think the government is showing that.

You are right; the Auditor General did state that there has been a lot of COVID spending that has been distributed that must be recovered. We have to recover those funds, so we have to put measures in place to adequately look over as to how they could be recovered.

But this bill — Bill C-32 — is basically the Fall Economic Statement. It’s going forward. It’s putting in measures of tax avoidance, updating the Income Tax Act and looking at ways that we could go against tax avoidance. I’m fully in support of these measures in the bill. Hopefully, in the future, we will have additional measures that will be productive, and go against the unnecessary COVID spending that did occur.