Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank the Member for the question. I think many Members, including myself, have had constituents approach us over the past number of years -- depending on the length of time you've been here -- with frustration in accessing our business programming. I think the committee comments hit this point. There has been a lot of concern around initial approaches made to one entity -- potentially RWED's business program and service delivery -- and they found that they really were more appropriately targeted at the BCC or at the Development Corporation. There seemed to be a lack of understanding, and it certainly wasn't entirely on the part of constituents approaching us, but a lack of understanding even on our part in terms of whose mandate and what mandate each of the organizations was expected to fulfill.
With that, we talked about the genesis of this, some discussion in Common Ground, the Business Program Review Committee, and a need to really move to a one-window approach to eliminate much of the duplication that was going on and try to identify and address some of the gaps in our program delivery that need to be filled. In order to be able to start to do that, we needed to make changes initially at headquarters in terms of how the organization works. Our understanding and our belief that is in time, the evolution of business programming in the regions will mean that we're moving to a one-window approach.
Currently, as the Member knows, RWED is often contracted in the regions to deliver programs on behalf of, say, the BCC. There are Community Futures organizations. We think that driving this change in headquarters will force closer collaboration and a better understanding between these various organizations. Eventually, you will see the change start to happen in the regions as regions are ready for it. Admittedly, different regions are at different stages of development at different experiences with our business programming organizations and lending institutions. This will happen at a different pace, and it will happen in a model that works best for each region.
There isn't an attempt to boilerplate here and impose structure on regions. In attempting to do this, we made this legislation more enabling. It isn't as descriptive. It allows for more flexibility. It allows for some of the partnership approaches that aren't currently available to our entities. This will mean, we think, in future that Aboriginal Business Canada can be a more effective partner with our organizations as can the federal government in some of its other entities, the Business Development Corporation. We think there is an approach to lever more money in this regard. We expect that this organization, when it's tasked with carrying out its new mandate, we will direct the organization to focus on the priorities that this government has laid out in front of it. One of those is diversification of the economy. So we expect that there will be a focus on a wide range of sectors and that this organization will seek to lend money to a wide range of businesses. I think that is what this organization will be able to do. Currently, we are a little handcuffed in that regard and not able to provide the type of programming that we would like.
I apologize for the lack of detail in the opening comments. We have spent a significant amount of time in the committee, back and forth on this bill. What you see here is the result of a real collaboration. I have to admit that there were many suggestions for input and change into our original approach from committee. I think they made sense. We've incorporated those because I think it has made for a better bill and will make for a better organization going forward. Thank you.