Mr. Speaker, I have a general question for my colleague and, if there is time, perhaps a much more specific one.
As I understand it, we are debating Bill C-23 which would set up legally, if that is the right word, the Department of Human Resources and Skills Development. Bill C-22 is the other side of the coin. Its purpose is to set up the Department of Social Development.
The bill we are discussing today came about as a result of an inquiry by the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities. That standing committee unanimously, including members of the Bloc, recommended that the old Department of Human Resources Development Canada be divided.
The committee did not recommend that because it disagreed with what the department was doing but because it felt the department was too large. Its budget was $60 billion or $70 billion. Much more significantly, it was too diverse. When the Mulroney government set up HRDC many decades ago, it simply lumped together four or five, maybe even six, federal departments but never brought them together or caused them to focus on the main topics which the old department was intended to do.
Bill C-23 is the unanimous will of the House of Commons. It would set up the new Department of Human Resources and Skills Development which, in my view, would be able to focus better on the issues that are important to my colleague.
The new department would be, in my mind, the department of lifelong learning and training. For example, if a senior citizen needs literacy training, he or she will get it. If a worker needs retraining, the worker will receive that retraining through this much more streamlined department.
My colleague focused on the Minister of Labour. Part of the legislation would establish the ministry of labour which deals with the matters that he is discussing.
I would suggest to my colleague that EI was lost in that great big department, which would be divided now and be much more streamlined. EI was in a department along with Canada pension, caregiver legislation, child care legislation, things like that. EI was simply a part of this great big whole. I would suggest that his Bloc colleagues who recommended that the department be divided were right. Such things will be better handled in this new, much more streamlined department.
It has become clear in the debates on the estimates, which have been going on in committee, that this division has not cost any more money. It is not as though we are adding some great big new department or anything like that. If anything, it will cost less money than the previous and, I would argue, very inefficient department cost.
With better delivery of service and better attention to some of the issues my colleague raised, why is his party opposing the legislation to divide the old federal department when it initially supported it along with the rest of the members of the House of Commons?