Hon. Donald Neil Plett (Leader of the Opposition): I couldn’t have said it better myself either. Oh, I did say it myself.

Yesterday in my office, when my staff and I did a bit of a debrief in the afternoon, we got on the topic of arguing with oneself. I said I like arguing with myself; I win all the arguments. That’s what I heard here today, you arguing with yourself, because you seem to know exactly all the reasons why we would get up and tell you why we didn’t agree to it. So thank you, at least, for preparing our notes for us. We appreciate that.

Since you’ve been quoting a bit, let me quote one person here myself, honourable colleague, in this chamber before I ask you a few questions. I’ll start with reading the quote:

. . . the use of pre-study in this chamber is occasional where the appropriate circumstances present themselves. Obviously, that has been more regularly on budget matters.

That was said by none other than the former government leader in the Senate, Senator Peter Harder, on May 30, 2018. I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Senator Gold, you had some numbers on previous governments. Let me ask you whether you know the exact number of nonfinancial pre-studies that the Harper government did in the nine and a half years that they were in government — half of those, by the way, in a minority government, not a majority as you alluded to — versus the four and a half years that the Trudeau government had in all of but the last six months in a majority government. Let’s forget about what father Trudeau did; let’s just focus on those two governments. Do you have the numbers on non-financial pre-studies?