Mr. Chair, I cannot speak to the experience in any one particular province. I can tell the member that as a general rule the federal government is a service provider, but where it is not, when we use service providers we need to go to a process that is competitive, fair and transparent. Those are the elements upon which we operate when we deal with service providers that are not part of any of our departments.
In most cases these things work well. I thank the member for giving us an indication of situations that might not fit that category. We have not had, to my understanding, the kinds of negative experiences the member has indicated happened in one particular province.
I want to build on that. Just two weeks ago we entered into an arrangement with the province of Ontario and put in place certain measures that would be transferrable to other provinces, outside of Quebec. We put in place additional resources for settlement and integration services that would engage us in an environment where we would have to bring into the fold many more service providers with the expertise to help us achieve our larger national objectives.
It would be unfair to the Canadian public, some of whom are watching this debate tonight, to tell them that we would not go through a competitive, fair and transparent process when we are talking about utilizing public funds for a common good and a common goal.