Discussion · Government Orders
Mark Gerretsen Liberal
“We did not use creative accounting for our defence spending. We started counting the Coast Guard so our numbers would match how other countries, like the United States, count theirs. I want the member to rephrase what he said.”
“Madam Speaker, I was sitting upstairs in my office watching this debate and heard the member’s account of creative accounting as it relates to the percentage of GDP spent on defence, and I could not help but come here to challenge him on that point. He is saying that we came up with a new creative accounting measure that basically started including things like the Coast Guard, but that is not true. The reason we include the Coast Guard now is that other countries like the United States have always been including the Coast Guard. We decided that, rather than let the formula be different for each country, we should have a formula that is consistent among other countries. How do I know this? I learned it at the same time the member learned it when we both sat on the national defence committee together back in 2017. Would the member like to rephrase the way he made that intervention earlier by suggesting it was creative accounting when all we were doing was matching our accounting with the way that other countries were doing it?”
Madam Speaker, I was sitting upstairs in my office watching this debate and heard the member’s account of creative accounting as it relates to the percentage of GDP spent on defence, and I could not help but come here to challenge him on that point. He is saying that we came up with a new creative accounting measure that basically started including things like the Coast Guard, but that is not true. The reason we include the Coast Guard now is that other countries like the United States have always been including the Coast Guard. We decided that, rather than let the formula be different for each country, we should have a formula that is consistent among other countries. How do I know this? I learned it at the same time the member learned it when we both sat on the national defence committee together back in 2017. Would the member like to rephrase the way he made that intervention earlier by suggesting it was creative accounting when all we were doing was matching our accounting with the way that other countries were doing it?