Mr. Speaker, I am not justifying it in my mind. I thought I had explained it. The ministers have departments. They are co-located departments, with the same supports that other ministers have, but done in coordination with other issues across the file.

A colleague just raised the issue of regional ministers. Let us take a look at the infrastructure supply chain by looking at the way street cars are supplied to Toronto. It may be an investment in southern Ontario that creates the new street car line and puts the new street cars on the tracks, but the steel is from Hamilton, which is located in a different part of the country. The trains themselves come from Thunder Bay and the northern part of Ontario.

Instead of having regional ministers carve up and sectionalize the approach to economic development, our party sees the interdependence of and coordination between regions. We see that being done better as a coordinated approach, with ministers around the table who are engaged on the file and working together. We also see all of them being inside the same department as advantageous, so that confidential information can be shared seamlessly in an efficient way as policy is developed, and therefore that we do not have to navigate a bureaucracy to get a quick response to a challenge that may present itself.

It is good government and I have seen it work really well in the roll out of infrastructure dollars and the development of good, strong social policy. The Canada child benefit comes out of one such ministry.

I do not see the need to have stand-alone, separate bureaucracies just to elevate the status of a certain department. I would rather see good, strong policies coming out of a department. That is exactly what we are seeing as a result of this structure. We are just formalizing it in legislation today.

Adam Vaughan

Transcript

Government Orders

Discussions (0)