Mr. Speaker, let me say first that the member is just dead wrong if he thinks we cannot address in considerable detail where the budget measures in Bill C-48 are needed and can and must be spent. All we have to know is that we have had a virtual gutting of post-secondary education funding as it relates both to both core funding and to student aid measures.
Second, he says that we just do not have a clue as to how it would be spent if we did make the money available. He was not listening earlier. That is fair enough; he may not have been. I reported to the House that in Nova Scotia, for example, there has already been a bill passed in the Nova Scotia legislature, and by all political parties, by the way. The Conservatives, the New Democratic Party official opposition and the third party, the Liberals, unanimously voted and fast tracked legislation to say that the post-secondary education funding flowing from Bill C-48 would be dedicated to post-secondary education tuition reduction and improved training.
I do not know what Newfoundland and Labrador has done. I do not know what any of the other governments have done. Maybe all of us in this House could take a page out of Nova Scotia's book and actually engage in the kind of cooperation and collaboration that went on in the Nova Scotia legislature to pass that bill. The bill was introduced by the official opposition, so the government was not precious about saying, “Gee, we are not going to support something that has come from the official opposition”. It said, “Let us get the job done. Let us collaborate an all party agreement to fast track this and designate exactly where the money is going”. Maybe we could all learn a lesson from that experience.