Mr. Speaker, the answer to that question is very simple. I am the parliamentary secretary in a ministry that is quite complex in the diversity of files it oversees. There are two ministers within that department who work on very different files. However, those files are connected. Employment insurance is a perfect example of this. There is both the policy development side, as it fits into a series of other social policies that support Canadians when they need help from their government via a delivery mechanism, but there is also a policy design mechanism. They need to work in concert with a whole series of other benefits that Canadians receive. We also have in that department a housing benefit that is about to emerge and support Canadians as they seek to find safe, adequate, and affordable housing. That has to fit into various other departmental components to make sure that the programs fit together like a jigsaw puzzle so we do not have cracks and spaces between programs where Canadians, unfortunately, sometimes fall.
The goal is not to create a hierarchy of ministries, but rather a relationship between ministries that creates a coordinated and sympathetic approach by having many different ministers work together on certain files. In some departments we may see two or three ministers, in others it is a single ministry, and sometimes it is a cabinet committee, and sometimes it is all of cabinet. The idea is not to have any single minister responsible for any one policy but rather to engage all of cabinet, in very particular ways inside some ministries, in developing policy.
What we see in Parliament is that it also works with the parliamentary secretaries when they have work to do on each other's files or files that are related to each other when someone is outside the ministries. I experienced this when I was the parliamentary secretary for intergovernmental affairs to the Prime Minister, working on the housing file. I had to go up through the hierarchical structure of the Privy Council Office, then across to another ministry, then down into the ministry, with permission to get information and share information in a way that was timely and allowed us to develop good, strong policy. It was inhibited by the structure of the act that we are now changing.
Putting certain ministers together equally, and putting them around the table as equals, shows that we have a collective approach to managing this country's challenges. This act accomplishes that. It puts people on the same salary scale but also within the same ministerial structure. That creates a much more efficient and collaborative approach to government, one that we would think a party like the NDP would support and understand.