Sure. There are national tables in various departments and in several of our organizations. I do not want to just talk about the departments because there are national and local tables too. Our impression is that not all stakeholders participate. There are a lot of economic players, including the co-operatives, of course. There is the Réseau de développement économique et d'employabilité in the provinces, as well as RDEE Canada at the national level. There are colleges and universities, as well as communities.
For parents, it would be easy to say to their children that they are going to plan the rest of their lives, without having them participate in the planning, and just tell them what they have to do. But things do not work like that.
We should take the time to talk to each other. Each community has an overall development plan. Collectively, we have a national strategic plan for communities. The Ministerial Conference on the Canadian Francophonie has just held an economic development forum where they came up with an integrated plan. Another strategic plan is being done at the moment. How many strategic plans are we going to have? Can we not all get together and discuss how we are going to go about doing things?
Departments often tell us that they have not thought about the desired objectives. We have had that discussion right here when we had the consultations about the last Roadmap. We want specific, measurable results. Before a program is implemented, can people not sit down with the communities to find out what they need?
If you just want hard-nosed economic development, it will no longer be economic development for minority francophone communities. I am an entrepreneur. I could just go with the majority and drop all this, but I take pride in operating my two businesses in French and in English in minority situations.
When a program is being considered for implementation, can we not make sure that all the stakeholders in economic development are at the national and local tables? I am talking about co-operatives, if there are any, and about colleges and universities, but communities should be at the table too. If community economic development programs are put in place without having the communities participate in the process, there is going to be a serious problem.