Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I would like to welcome our witnesses.
I would like to correct what Mr. Godin was saying. During the course of the two weeks when we were travelling in the communities, we were able to see that certain aspects of the Dion plan had worked very well whereas others had not fared so well. That is why we are here now.
I have a question regarding economic development. Roger, I think that you have created a monster, in the positive sense of the word. For example, in Manitoba, the CDEM, the Conseil de développement économique des municipalités bilingues du Manitoba, has become indispensable. If we were ever to lose it... We have put all of our eggs in the same basket. Beforehand, we had nothing with respect to economic development, and that is probably more or less the same situation throughout the country. What is of most concern to the people is the long-term funding, which is so precarious.
Moreover, you said that the funding was available until 2008. What are we going to do post-2008? As a result of the horizontal strategy, departments such as WD, for instance, are starting to say that they no longer want to be involved in community development. That concerns us a great deal. If we were to develop a new Dion plan—perhaps we will call it by another name—should the funding be provided by one department, such as, for instance, Heritage Canada? We would therefore have funding for economic development. Otherwise, should we continue the horizontal strategy or ask the Department of Health or the Department of Industry to fund certain initiatives?