Senator Gold: The numbers that I have include $2.5 billion for the grocery rebate, if I can use that colloquial term, and $2 billion for top-up transfers to the provinces and territories.

Senator Gold: The numbers that I have include $2.5 billion for the grocery rebate, if I can use that colloquial term, and $2 billion for top-up transfers to the provinces and territories.

Hon. Andrew Cardozo: Senator Gold, we are talking about the grocery rebate, and I have to tell you that on my street the other day, I saw a senior go to Canadian Tire and buy a lot of tools. They could have used their grocery rebate to buy the tools, but I was looking at him, and he looked pretty healthy to me — well-fed. I am assuming he had eaten and that he had bought groceries as of late.

Is the government going to say he should not be eating because he bought some tools, or can he use the grocery rebate to rebate the groceries he bought, the prices of which are going up astronomically?

Do they apply to the groceries that he bought?

Hon. Leo Housakos: Government leader, no one is questioning the validity of a grocery rebate at a time when this government has created or helped create such great inflation, and Canadians are suffering, but we have seen time and time again in this place that when you pass legislation with all the best intent in the world that legislation isn’t clear and transparent in giving directives to those that are going to apply this particular bill and apply this particular program with clear regulations.

We are just asking if it wouldn’t make sense to have some regulations and guidelines to make sure that all these billions of dollars would go to a grocery rebate and not to a hardware store rebate.

And there is nothing wrong for people in need who might need tools, Senator Cardozo, but there is something wrong when you take a government program, and then it is used, for example, to go on a vacation or to buy accessories for an automobile or to buy sporting goods, for example, for entertainment and sports reasons.

Would the government leader agree that we need to attach to the title of this bill clear guidance to make sure that all the money goes for grocery rebates and nothing else?