What is on the government's radar is a whole new approach to federal-provincial relations in Canada.
You know that the Prime Minister will meet the premiers in Vancouver next week for the second time since being elected Prime Minister. The last time the former prime minister of Canada called the premiers to a meeting was January 2009. Seven years, or six years and change, passed between these meetings. How do you have important national conversations when the provincial leaders and the federal prime minister are not at the same table?
I have had the pleasure of speaking either face to face or on the phone with every one of Canada's ministers of energy to talk about the federal role in stimulating a discussion of the Canadian energy strategy which has been so well built so far by the Council of the Federation, the premiers.
I am very keen to have conversations with the Government of Ontario on the Ring of Fire project. We know the enormous potential that it carries. We know where it is at this moment. “This moment” doesn't mean that this is where we'll be in six months or a year. I've reached out to my colleagues.
As many of you, certainly the member for Portage—Lisgar, will know, Winnipeg will be hosting the annual meeting of energy and mines ministers this summer, in August. That will be, if not the first time, then a terrific opportunity for a face-to-face meeting between provincial energy ministers and the federal Minister of Natural Resources. I am keen to have a conversation with northern Ontario about mineral potential there and in other places.
We're keen to work with them collaboratively to ensure that governments are talking to each other, something which for too long, sadly, has not been the case in Canada.