Madam Chairman, I will begin by congratulating the minister on his new portfolio which I believe he has been in for nine days. He has done a tremendous job over the last four and a half hours.
I have two questions for the minister. The first one will be pretty hard considering the short time he has been in the office but it relates to the rural lens. As people know, the Government of Canada has a process whereby all expenditures and new programs are looked at from the point of rural Canada. As my colleague, who spoke before me, talked about urban Canada, I wanted to make sure rural Canada received its fair time and attention tonight.
The rural lens looks at all the programs. I would like to know how the department has used it, if at all, or at least that the minister is committed to ensuring that his staff uses it when they do programs.
While he is thinking about that, my second question relates to an update on the Government of Canada website. This is a very wise expenditure in the estimates for my riding. It is an important expenditure and an important investment because in the more rural ridings, the farther one is from large cities the harder one has getting information on government programs. Sometimes a community is so small, like some of the communities in my riding, that they have never had a federal government office or even a large number of employees who could answer a lot of questions. This new technology is wonderful in that respect. People can now have access to all the government programs.
Just before the minister answers those two questions, I occasionally like to talk to the people who are watching out there. In my riding of Yukon, which is in the farthest part of western Canada, it is only 8.05 p.m., so lots of people and even children are watching. I would just remind them that the Government of Canada website has millions and millions of pages on every department, on all the programs and a lot of things for businesses all on the opening page. The address is www.canada.gc.ca. I will repeat that at the end of my remarks in case they are just logging on and do not have broadband yet, which is very important to rural Canada as well, so they can get on quickly. It also has a whole section about government on the right side of the page. It has all the processes on how government works.
For those children who may be out there watching and who need to do projects for school, if they go to “About Canada” right in the middle of the page, there are maps of Canada, facts on its history, Canada's symbols and quizzes.
What I would like to know from the minister is the progress that has been made on the website. It continually needs updating and advancement and I hope we are making good progress on the Government of Canada website.