Now you've moved to a national strategy. My question is, why wasn't there one in the beginning? If it were a health care issue.... It's not as though we don't know these challenges—transportation, health care, community services. It's always difficult in a large country like this, and it's expensive. That's why we have plans and phase-in and that's why there are constant protests coming from the north and far-flung regions about why they're not getting service equal to what we can get in my hometown of Hamilton.
But what I don't understand is why there wasn't a national strategy. It sounds as though there wasn't one because the money wasn't there to do one, which is just not acceptable. If this were a health challenge, we would have recognized that health challenge and we would have put a national strategy in place.
The absence of a national strategy—it looks to me like the politics of this, which is one step beyond you, are that we don't have the money and we don't want to pony up the money, so let's not have a strategy because that will give opponents something to point to in terms of what's not being done. Now it just looks as though they've run out of runway and they have no choice but to do it, and they're dragging their heels at that.
Chair, I know my time has probably run out, but I'll just finish my thought. This may be one of the very few times in the 15 years I've been on this committee that we do need to call a minister in, because it may just be that the answer to the problem has been that the bureaucracy has been told that there is not enough money to do a strategy, so don't even think of starting one. If that's the case, then there has to be a political answer to this, not a bureaucratic one.