Mr. Speaker, I just want to reiterate that we have seen that a lot of the economic development in Canada is focused on the private sector, on small and medium size businesses, which is a good thing because they generate a lot of economic activity in our country.
However, what we are trying to emphasize today is that community economic development needs to be an explicit part of the mandate of an agency such as this one. Local communities need to have more of a say in the kind of development that happens in their areas. The people of the community need to have more involvement in the actual project. The communities need to have more learning and capacity building to do the kind of economic development work that is most important for the people of those regions.
We think the government needs to pay more attention to community economic development all across the country. Now that we have the opportunity, with the establishment of this agency, it needs to be an explicit part of its mandate.