Mr. Chairman, I think I heard it

right the first time. I don’t agree with the premise

that by eliminating some of these positions we’re suggesting that any of these positions are not contributing to the mandate. I don’t think that’s fair to the positions affected or persons affected. I don’t think that’s the right conclusion to make.

I think, Mr.

Chairman, communications is an

important part of our mandate, as are all other divisions in the department. As I stated earlier — and I’ve said this many a time — what you will see if you look at the positions affected in the department is that we have not eliminated any mandate at all. We have not eliminated any program. What we have done is look, program by program, to see how we could reduce some of the positions and expenditures but still deliver the programs we need to deliver.

I think that with communications, you will see we have a number of positions in that area — Policy, Legislation and Communications; that’s what it used to be called before it was restructured — and that there are a number of people engaged in the communications work and graphics work and advertising work and pamphlet designing and annual report designing and web site designing. There’s a group of people who are doing the work. The best decision to make is to look at what everybody’s responsible for and see how we could do the same job with fewer resources.

If we had choices, we don’t want to do less. So to say we are reducing those positions because they were not contributing to the mandate is not fair to the employees impacted. With respect to all the employees who have been impacted, these are choices we had to make.

I think the Member should keep in mind that when we make these choices, it’s not about, “Do we not appreciate the communications section more? Do we not appreciate some of the other positions that have been impacted?” We had to make an overall department mandate, which is to provide health and social services. I have made the commitment publicly that, as much as possible as the Minister, I do not want to impact front-line workers. We’re talking about nurses, doctors or medical services — a myriad of services that we provide. I think we need to go to a bigger circle about how we make those choices.