Mr. Speaker, this is quite a pleasant about face. Yesterday, I was being criticized for forcing all businessmen to be on my side. There are some who do not agree with us. That is what democracy is all about.
I am not asking everyone to be on our side. At the moment, we are trying to give the Minister of Human Resources Development the legislative means to ensure programs are better co-ordinated. At present, we are trying with the provinces, including Quebec, to find ways to decentralize and administer them so that Canadians may benefit directly from them.
I do not think our plan is to build a bigger public service in Ottawa. We proved that recently by cutting 45,000 public service positions in the federal government. If we were here to build empires, we would not be laying off 15 per cent of the workforce.
If we can deliver services to people better than we do at the moment, we are always ready to look at the options, but our objective is to ensure that regions in Canada with more unemployed receive essentially the same benefits as regions that are well off.
Our job, as the Government of Canada, is to ensure that well off regions and prosperous citizens are able to help those, across Canada, in the Maritimes as in Quebec, who are, unfortunately, in the difficult situation of being out of work at the moment.