Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to the member's remarks and I would like to respond to her remarks concerning higher education.
In the recent budget scholarship income was made tax free up to $3,000. In previous budgets there was the RESP, the registered educational savings plan program, which included not only tax breaks but actually a grant for each child in a family, up to a considerable amount. These were the first new grants in higher education for many years.
Also in this budget there were the 2,000 funded research chairs, funded research professorships, which will have a direct affect on students. There will be junior and senior professorships. Students will be employed.
The granting councils over the last several years have received considerable additional funds. This year, for example, the social sciences council alone received an additional $10 million. All of those grants go to help students on the campuses to get jobs working with professors and that kind of thing.
As well, the government put all colleges, universities, high schools and elementary schools on the Internet, which is a very important step.
I have not even mentioned the millennium scholarships.
The member said that the government has not done much to help higher education. I know that more must be done, but this time university groups, students and others, have said to us that we should increase transfers to the provinces so that core funding for universities, not more scholarships or research help, which is supplied by the provinces, could be strengthened.
If the member reads the budget, this time the transfers to the provinces were referred to as higher education and health. Our concern on the government side was that if we transferred this money for higher education and health, how would we know, in either of those fields, what the provinces would do?
Has she heard of any province which has used the increase in the block transfer this year for higher education purposes? If she has, I would be glad to hear it. If she has not, could she suggest to us ways in which we could be sure that the money we transfer to the provinces will be used for the purposes for which it was intended, higher education and health?