Mr. Speaker, there was a period of time when I had the good fortune to be a minister in the Paul Martin government. Let me tell the members how beneficial those meetings were.
We sat down with the premiers and the bureaucracy to hear about some of the issues. In advance of that meeting, officials in the bureaucracy, who knew there was a meeting coming up, would be in contact with each other all across the country.
When the meeting actually started, the bureaucracy already knew some of the issues that would be raised and had already started working toward finding solutions. At the end of the meetings, we were always able to come up with recommendations to deal with the pressures that the different premiers or territorial leaders were experiencing, rather than just coming forward with a press release that said there was a meeting and that was it.
We were always able to find solutions to problems, and if we could not find solutions for everything, we could at least commit to working more closely with the premiers of those different provinces to find those solutions.
I am very proud of the record of both the Chrétien government and the Paul Martin government. The relationship we have with the municipalities is the result of the Liberal government. That is how we build a country: by building on a continuous basis, talking to each other, and understanding the pressures that our cities and municipalities and communities are facing. That is how to build a country. It is not by ignoring them, staying in the office, and not meeting with people