Mr. Speaker, the lead minister has consulted on several occasions with the ministers in question. In the joint statement released earlier today, all the provincial ministers agreed that a Canada-wide reform of social programs was required and they invited the minister to discuss the process with them. He has done that in the past and intends to do so again in the weeks to come. The deadlock exists only in the hon. member's mind, because consultations are ongoing and these consultations are the reason why things are taking longer. Last week, we were criticized for not imposing immediately our choice of a solution and the
reason for that was simple: we were not through consulting with the provinces.