Mr. Speaker, the hon. member I understand is also the critic for social development. The body of my remarks was to say that yes, we have been doing things and I could run down the list for him: the national child benefit, the child disability benefit, the early childhood development agreement, the multilateral framework for early learning and child care. There are a number of programs that we have introduced in the last 11 years with significant amounts of money.
What was indicated in my speech in terms of the splitting up of the two departments was to give vision in terms of social policy issues and the responsibility to one department. That is what we are trying to do with this piece of legislation.
I do not think, as I said in my speech, that once the ministry is split that is the end of the types of policy issues that we will be working on and dealing with. We have a record. The record is the programs that have been put into place since 1993 when we became the government. We have provided income support and other programs to Canadian citizens.
We want to have a more coherent way of delivering those services. That is part of what the bill proposes, one stop shopping, if one wants to call it that. Canadians can go to one place and have access to all the programs and services that the Department of Human Resources and Skills Development provides because we did not want to duplicate administrative costs. The responsibilities in terms of the social agenda will be on Social Development Canada.