Senator Gold: The answer to your question is that I stand here quite proudly and in good conscience, representing this government. I also stand proudly and privileged to remind the senator that to describe, as you and your leader have done, the former Governor General’s mandate as a “fake job” is something that is once again disrespectful to the institution.

Senator Plett: No, you did not answer it. You did not answer his question about how much the government is spending. You did not answer my question about how Canadians can contact the Special Rapporteur. That wasn’t a degradation of the previous Governor General. It is the Prime Minister who is showing contempt to a wonderful individual, as the Governor General, Mr. Johnston. It’s the Prime Minister who appointed him and said, “This is my good family friend. A member of the Trudeau Foundation, a good family friend, and I’m appointing him as a Special Rapporteur. By the way, if you want to get ahold of him, contact my office.” But he’s independent.

And then you say we have disrespect. You are sitting there and laughing at Canadians, and the Prime Minister is laughing at Canadians. His dad had the famous Western Canadian salute. This Prime Minister is using both hands.

My question now concerns the ArriveCAN app. Let’s see if you can just once answer a question without all of your diatribe about how evil we are. Answer a question.

This app, leader, was never necessary, but if the Trudeau government was so intent on going ahead with it, it could have asked some of the thousands of IT professionals who work for the Government of Canada to develop it. It could even have contracted out the work that this government so loves to do. Instead, this incompetent government chose to pay over $8 million to a two-person company.