Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his hard work on the file. There is value to having the economic ministries. I look again at Alberta. We are in crisis. In Edmonton, the unemployment rate is 8.2%. In Calgary, it is 8.3%. People are suffering. We have Uber drivers, with two different engineering degrees, who cannot find work. The usage of our food bank in Edmonton is up 80,000 customers a month.
Thankfully there is some good support and we are stepping up to help those people, but we are in need in Alberta. We need a voice for Alberta and that could have been served previously by someone like the western diversification minister. It is not being served by the current senior Liberal minister, the MP for Edmonton Mill Woods. For example, for infrastructure transit funding, Alberta gets underfunded 14% per capita. The infrastructure minister is based in Alberta and we are underfunded.
Energy east was steamrolled and crushed by the government constantly changing the goal posts. We have no one in Alberta inside the government at the cabinet table representing Alberta and western interests, standing and saying these are jobs for Alberta, these are jobs for western Canada. These regional ministries do have a value and they have been taken away by the government.