I certainly think from my experience that when you have a forum and you have in the room the people who are focused on a solution, you come up with a much better plan and commitment to working together. A recent example of using federal funding to try to address a problem would be the use of the housing and homelessness money. Some things that were developed in Manitoba are currently in Manitoba and they wouldn't have been here without that. Certainly we received funding from that for our youth shelter, which is an eight-bed place where kids can show up and spend the night safely, or a few nights safely, if they have nowhere to go. The question of whether or not that will continue after the end of this funding year or whether the province will pick it up--and we're not sure--leaves it in limbo. I agree that often discussions on solutions break down because they are not the responsibility of the group that's in the room, so if you have everybody in the room, you have a much better dialogue, I think.
On March 30th, 2010. See this statement in context.