Mr. Speaker, on this side of the House the perspective of the Conservative Party has been very simple. We believe that government should be smaller. It should be more efficient and more responsive to the needs of taxpayers.
The creation of new departments, new bureaucracies, and new cabinet ministers may be very helpful for allowing more spending and more bureaucracy, but the experience of the taxpayers of York—Simcoe is that the more bureaucracy they encounter, the less responsive it is, and the less service they get. The more they see their taxes go up, the more they see their taxes wasted.
Our solution would be a smaller government that takes less from the taxpayers and allows them support where they genuinely need it, not more spending and more programs in Ottawa, as indicated if the employment insurance system actually did function as an employment insurance system.
Our solution on things like HRDC, which is now becoming HRSDC, is to not have wasteful grant programs where the Auditor General has to be critical of the political interference, the lack of tangible results and the lack of accountability. Our solution is to focus on accountable processes, accountable systems and not look for ways to spend money, but look for ways to respect taxpayers' dollars and to allow them to spend their money the way that they would like to see it spent in order to make their lives and their families' lives better for many years in the future.
I do not see how the creation of new ministerial posts help to achieve that. A new cabinet minister may help a Prime Minister who is concerned about keeping his caucus happy, happier by creating more opportunities within, but that does not create new opportunities for people in my community who are working hard and trying to build better lives. In fact, it makes it tougher for them to do that when they see bigger and larger government. Bigger and larger government is not the answer in their lives. More opportunities for them is the answer in their lives.