Thank you very much.
I will be supporting the motion. I think the issues of justification or no justification are subjective.
Certainly my experience, limited to the last meeting, where the court challenges program folks were here, satisfied me that my original understanding of the government's rationale was in fact the rationale. I think that was repeated by the government members as well. As I said then and I say now, these are legitimate arguments that I don't agree with; it would appear that perhaps most of us on this side don't.
The one point I'd like to make is that an assessment was done. I think the arguments that were put were all addressed in the assessment. The assessment called for greater accountability. It was accepted that it was necessary. But generally speaking, to be fair to the assessment, the conclusion reached was that the program was working and it should go forward. That was the assessment.
As I said last week, I spoke to Gérard La Forest, who did an independent review, to explore this further, because it's an important program to me in terms of Canadians with disabilities, aboriginal Canadians, and minority language challenges across the country, but in particular in the province of New Brunswick.
It's a critically important program, and I was not close to being convinced of the merits of the government's case in terms of its cancellation. That's basically what this says, so I will be supporting my colleague on his motion.