Besides the argument that this work can be done by department staff, besides everything we have seen, with the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, Rights and Democracy and others, there is a difference in this case. At the end of the day, those were arm's length organizations, what we could call, in French, “paragouvernemental”.
Those organizations had certain responsibilities and independence in terms of the research they conducted, and those elements would not necessarily be maintained if their work was done by the department, given the new procedure. I have absolutely no issue with the quality of the work done by department staff specifically, but the fact remains: first and foremost, they work for a minister. The people working at the National Council of Welfare or the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy maintained a healthy separation from government, and that gave them more credibility.
That is why we are so concerned by the elimination of the National Council of Welfare and other such organizations the government has decided to do away with, organizations whose only fault was having opinions that quite often conflicted with the government's.